Orpheus Ascending
by notmanos
Summary: Logan & Bob team up to find two angry gods bent on chaos and destructionbut do they have a prayer of stopping them?
1. Part 1

ORPHEUS ASCENDING 

Disclaimer:The character of Logan & all X Men is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. Bob is still mine - hands off. 

N.B.: Takes place shortly after the "X Men" movie,  and Fearless. 

1 

    The Plano de los Caballos Mestenos was not exactly a tourist destination. Or at least not this part. 

As deserts went, it had its moments: the sunsets could be spectacular, the wide and empty sky melting into a hundred different shades of orange, streaks of red bleeding in when the pollution haze blew in from Monterrey. Some of the barrel shaped cacti in the surrounding plains would occasionally bloom, with yellow or red flowers nestled between the hair like white spines, and the place would seem almost liveable for a little while. Almost. 

But mostly it was just sand, a dingy brownish tinged gold, stretching off towards far hills that were a more dung colored, depressing brown, while the daytime sky was such a pale, washed out blue it was more ivory than anything else. Sometimes there was nothing to do but put drops of booze on the scorpions and watch them sting themselves to death, but even that got boring after a few weeks. This was sunbaked, desolate nothing, and Murdoch wondered why the hell he'd ever come to Mexico. A gig was a gig, but this one had never made much sense - guard a building invisible to the naked eye in the middle of an empty desert, roughly fifty miles from the nearest sign of civilization, teamed up with a slob like Corso. There was only the two of them, and the fuck cheated at poker - like he wouldn't notice! 

At least the building was always reasonably cool. Carved from slabs of granite with such precision that they didn't need any mortar or materials to hold it together, it was more like a crude mausoleum than the church it supposedly was. As for the not being seen, the guy who hired him, Craven, said it was some mystical "security system" or whatever the fuck, as this place was beyond holy and therefore a "treasure" for sacrilegious plunderers. Well, Murdoch had poked around, and had never seen anything resembling a treasure, unless the ugly gargoyle like statuary was worth something on the black market. 

And nothing ever happened to break the monotony. He was hoping some of those supposed "threats" would manifest themselves, but they never did. So it was day after day of getting drunk and playing cards with a dirty rotten cheater, and hoping for some major threat to come down on their heads so he could actually do something more exciting than listen to his own stubble grow. 

Finally, the day came when something unusual appeared, and yet it was more and less than he expected. 

Wavering in the heat of the blasted desert like mirages, there were three figures walking straight towards their unseen location, and there was no way in hell they were locals. 

Two figures clad head to foot in black flanked a white guy with no shirt on, wearing only jeans and hiking boots and a belt with a metal buckle that glinted hard in the sunlight. The guy should have been sunburnt redder than a beet, and possibly dead of sunstroke by now - it was a hundred and twenty in the shade, and there was no fucking shade out there, and the nearest paved road was twenty miles back - but the guy was just sweaty and deeply tanned. He was built too; toned upper body, sizable arms, and a flat stomach just one can short of six pack abs, so he guessed he was a weightlifter or some shit. he had something slung over his back - his shirt, and ... a leather jacket? In this heat? No fucking way. What was a weightlifter doing out in the middle of the Mexican desert? And who the fuck were those two weirdos with him? 

It looked like they were wearing those full body black veils he'd seen Arab women on the t.v. wear - what the hell were they called? Some kind of foreign name. They must have been near death themselves under those things, roasting in their own juices, but they showed no signs of heat fatigue either. 

What the fuck was this shit? What was a white guy doing with two fanatical Muslim chicks in the middle of nowhere? 

As soon as he decided it wasn't a mirage, he went back to the main room of the 'church", and told Corso they had company. Corso was sitting with his feet up on the folding card table, gnawing on a stick of beef jerky and watching a Mexican soap opera on the portable television, and seemed so caught up in the problems of Pilar and Rodrigo he didn't seem to hear him at first. Finally his tiny blue eyes scudded up to him, and he stopped chewing on his jerky stick. "What?" 

"I said we got company. I think." 

"Either we do or we don't." 

He sighed in frustration. "Look, there's some freaks out there - you tell me if they are or aren't comin' for us." 

Corso let his rattlesnake boots thunk to the stone floor, and put his jerky chew on the table, not bothering to turn off the t.v. before he followed him out into the small excuse for a front room, where two square holes cut into the wall, on either side of the heavy stone door, served as windows. Corso studied the figures, now much more clearly defined in spite of the heat shimmers, and suggested, "Maybe the caravan for a circus sideshow broke down." 

"Out here?" 

"That guy has the worst hat hair I've ever seen.But where's his hat?" He wondered, pushing his own cowboy hat back on his head. 

"What's with the Islamic chicks?" 

"Maybe he's a eunuch." Corso straightened up, chuckling at his own joke, and said, "Anything could be hiding under those cowls." 

Murdoch was pretty sure they weren't called cowls, but since he didn't know the right name, he kept his mouth shut. "So it's trouble?" 

Corso didn't reach for the automatic pistol tucked into a holster clipped to the back of his pants; he went for semi-automatic sub machine gun he kept propped up in the corner. He had a lot of odd things stacked there, including a sawed off shotgun, a cattle prod, and a baseball bat. "They do seem to be headed right for us, and that guy don't look like he sells Amway." 

"No," Murdoch agreed, wondering which weapon he should pull. He finally decided his .45 Magnum was good enough. 

Corso positioned himself at the right side window, sub machine gun braced against the sill, and Murdoch knelt in front of the left side window, pulling his Magnum and resting the gun butt against the cool stone sill. If this was a charge, it certainly was an unhurried one. But the guy didn't look all that happy, although traveling with religious chicks would do that to a guy. 

He could feel the tension knotting in his stomach the closer they came - by the time they were within ten feet of them, his hands were so sweaty he could barely keep hold of his gun. Why weren't they doing anything? Were they really just odd but innocent victims who had stumbled into the wrong patch of desert? 

"Corso," he whispered, shooting a look at him. He seemed as cool as ice, totally focused on his targets, sharp face even sharper in the glow of sunlight, and never looked at him. 

"Take it easy. Set a target, go for it on my mark." 

"What if we're wrong? Or what if ... what if they're like us?" 

"Then we completely open up on 'em." 

That didn't answer his question. In fact it made the butterflies in his stomach flutter that much harder.  
If they were attacking, then why didn't the guy look nervous, or at least angry? He just looked dyspeptic at best, like he was annoyed at all of this interrupting his lunch. "I'll mow 'em down, you go for singles if they move," Corso ordered,aiming down his sight. "Now." 

And the millisecond he said that, the guy said something to the women, and took off running towards them, like he'd heard Corso just give the order to fire. 

The weird shit got weirder. 

The chicks in the robes seemed to defy gravity - they leapt straight up towards the roof of the supposedly unseen church, and he could almost swear he heard them scrambling up the sides of the smooth walled building. That settled it - they had to be mutants. 

Corso strafed the guy good - he heard the bullets thud into the guy like he was a fucking car, but he kept on running full force towards the door, only now he was bellowing in rage, blood rising in a red mist around him as Murdoch saw the holes torn in his chest. 

Something silver glinted in his hands. No, they were coming from his hands, like knives wedged between his fingers, and he had never seen him pull them out. 

The door was heavy stone, and difficult to open even with his mutant enhanced strength, so he didn't see what good this guy's knives were gonna do. And he was still thinking that even as the man's knives burst through the one foot thick stone door. 

He was a mutant too, wasn't he? Shit - no wonder they weren't concerned. They knew they could take this place without much trouble. 

Just then, the women jumped down, right in front of the windows. 

Murdoch saw enough of the black blur to reel back, and while the woman grabbed the muzzle of his gun he didn't fight her for it, even though he knew he was probably stronger than her - he may have had enhanced strength, but he had no idea what her gifts were. 

Corso wasn't so lucky. He held onto his sub-machine gun as that other woman grabbed it, and for it she smashed his head down on the bridge of his nose, making it break with a noise like a rifle shot. He made a noise that was half startled, half pained, and stumbled backwards sans gun, grabbing at his bloody noise. He did have the wherewithal to shout the emergency phrase Craven had told them to use if everything went diddly shit: "Locuna ran mal deimos!" 

As far as Murdoch could tell, nothing happened, except knife guy was kicking out chunks of the door he had completely demolished, and then he was inside, bloody, snarling ... and oh god, his skin was moving. 

No, not it wasn't. For a moment it looked that way, but it was just healing over so rapidly it looked like his skin was actually crawling. In spite of all the blood now splattered over his chest and arms, Murdoch could clearly see the entry wound holes sealing shut, and a couple actually expelled the bullets that got stuck in his body; they hit the floor with a metallic noise, like falling pennies. 

And now the guy look pissed. Really pissed. "What the hell kind of welcome is that?" He snarled, nostrils flaring, face matted with his own blood. He looked something less than Human, and even though Murdoch was relatively sure he could send this guy flying with one punch, he wasn't sure he wanted to make him more pissed off than he already was. He had a suspicion it wasn't conducive to your health. 

The women were inside too. They had thrown the guns outside into the sand, which, again, he didn't consider a good sign - they didn't think they needed them to take them on. 

"Asshole!" Corso said, and flexed, throwing his fist across the room and cracking the guy right across the jaw. That was Corso's mutation - he could become elastic, and stretch himself to fantastic proportions. He didn't like to do it to often, though, as he said it hurt once he got beyond a "reasonable length". Murdoch had no idea what a "reasonable length" was, but had no desire to find out. 

Whether he was all elastic or not, one of them women hit him in the back of the head and he obviously felt it, as his arm snapped back to original length and he stumbled forward, nearly going head first into the wall. And that's when the ugly ass gargoyle statues joined them. 

Normally they were about a foot high, made of the same grey granite as everything else. But now not only were they somehow alive, but six feet tall, green, and even uglier than before, with muzzles like gars and grey eyes like horizontal slits in their grotesquely misshapen heads. They slashed out at the women with their gnarled hands, and one grabbed knife guy by the arm and threw him into the stony embrace of one of his pals. 

Murdoch sunk back against the wall and simply watched, not sure what the hell was going on, but glad   
the six suddenly living gargoyles weren't attacking him or Corso. And it was probably a good thing he hadn't tried to hawk them. 

The women teamed up on one gargoyle, one grabbing it from behind while the other twisted his head off like a bottle cap, proving they had some pretty enhanced strength too. As for knife guy, he jammed his knives into the gargoyle that had him and ripped them in separate directions, cutting the thing in half. As its body parts hit the ground, they shattered into stone. 

As the women and the guy made short work of the gargoyles, not even blinking at the oddity of it all, Corso stretched out his arm and grabbed something from the weapons pile in the corner. He then shoved it in his hands, and Murdoch saw he'd given him the baseball bat. "Make yourself useful, strong guy," he snapped, grabbing something from the pile for himself. He reeled his arm back too fast for him to see what he had. 

Just then, a fight with a gargoyle had thrown one of the women in his path, her back to him, and he seriously hoped there wasn't a woman under there - or a mutant. He hated fighting fellow mutant ... but fuck if he didn't need the money Craven was paying for this otherwise boring gig. Murdoch swung the bat, putting all his strength behind it, and he was surprised the woman's head didn't go flying across the room. 

The bat snapped cleaning in half, one part of it flying away, and the woman dropped to her knees, grabbing her head. Weirdly enough, the other woman did the exact same thing at the same time, as if he had hit them both. 

He then heard knife guy roar like an aggrieved lion, and he looked just in time to see he was swinging the upper half of a stone gargoyle's body at him, as if it was a weapon and not a semi-living thing. 

'I hate fighting mutants,' Murdoch thought again, just as the torso of the gargoyle slammed into his face and knocked all the consciousness right out of him. 

*** 

    Corso knew Murdoch was a lame ass, "super strength" or not. 

Shit, strength was a dime a dozen among mutants, and even then they usually had something else too. Look at the shirtless hat hair guy - he had to be stronger than he looked, he could take bullets, and he had those pig stickers in his hands. That was powers multi-tasking. 

He didn't know about the skirts - they seemed pretty strong, but what was it with Murdoch beaning one and both of them going down? 

The stone gargoyle shattered against Murdoch's head and sent him flying back into the far wall before he collapsed face first to the floor, flat out and completely useless. Hair guy busied himself fighting the other gargoyles, but it was obvious they weren't much of a challenge for him. So Corso bided his time, waited, and as soon as the last stone gargoyle shattered on the floor, he flicked out his arm, lengthening it in a snap ( fuck, that hurt ), and jammed the activated cattle prod right in the guy's balls. 

He didn't see it coming, and had no time to react. He screamed in pain and hit the floor like a sack of hammers. "Damn straight that hurts," he admitted, as the guy struggled to breathe. "A cattle prod in the balls will stop a charging bull dead in his tracks. Believe me, I know - I grew up on a cattle ranch." 

Corso set the prod back in its corner, but seeing the girls both struggling to their feet, he elongated both his arms and wrapped them solidly around their delicate necks, about an ounce of pressure away from strangling them, and helped them up to their feet. "Play nice and I won't kill you," he said, a sort of partial truth. They were going to play nice, and they were going to die anyways. 

The guy on the floor made a sort of gagging noise, but still didn't have the strength to get to his feet or move just yet. Yeah, a few tens of thousands of volts to the nuts would do that to a guy. 

"Let's see your pretty faces, huh?" He said, stretching his hands up to remove their heavy veils. It really hurt to stretch his fingers - he could hear the elasticized bones crackling like fresh celery - but there was no way he was letting go of their necks. These bitches were strong; that was obvious. 

He pulled back the black cowls to reveal not only were they females with unmutated faces, but they were young - girls. And identical twin brunettes at that. He couldn't help but feel a bit aroused as unfulfilled sexual fantasies rose to the forefront of his mind. "You gals legal?" He wondered, hoping they'd answer in the negative. They looked sixteen at the oldest - prime for picking. 

They both grinned at him, mismatched eyes ( one silver-blue, one hazel - gold, and in the exact same place on both of them ) shining, but not with fear - it looked more like hunger. Were they actually as turned on as he was? Cool. "No-" the one on his right said. 

"-we're-" the other one echoed. 

"-very illegal," the other one finished. Why the hell were they talking like this? 

"Great." Yes, they were freaky as hell, but twins-teenage twins. Who could pass that up? "So why don't we-" 

"Get-" 

"-a-" 

"-bite to-" 

"-eat?" They interrupted him. "Great-" 

"-idea." 

And that's when their faces changed. 

Their foreheads seemed to slide over eyes turned molten yellow, and too many teeth seemed to be crammed in their small mouths, lead by jagged, protruding fangs. Before he could react to this new and startling unattractive mutation, they turned in unison and sank their fangs into his neck. 

He tried to move but found himself paralyzed as his arms snapped back to their usual length and type,  and he could feel his blood leaving his body in a dizzying rush as they sucked it out. It should have been erotic, but it wasn't. 

Corso had time to consider that maybe they weren't mutants before his vision faded to black. 

2 

    It was like a nuclear bomb of pain had exploded inside Logan's nervous system. 

He wanted to get up, he really did, but his body seemed to have just absolutely quit on him. Aftershocks of pain shuddered through his, fracturing his vision, and he found, if he just waited a few seconds in utter stillness, that the pain would slowly start to ebb. 

And he had thought all those bullets slamming into him had been bad. 

The asshole was a real sicko, getting turned on by having two female captives, unaware that they weren't as young as they looked ( they were what? About a hundred? ), and that he was actually the captive. Did anyone actually catch the Weird Sisters who didn't ( sometimes ) live to regret it? As much as he loathed going anywhere with the Loony Bin ( Amaranth's nickname was so apropos ), Bob thought they might be useful on this mission, and he had to admit it was nice to travel with people as naturally bullet proof as he was. 

They had finally stopped playing with their food and bit him when Logan found the strength to move his hand, and propped himself up on his knees, his balls still radiating an unholy pain that made his legs feel like Jell-O. His claws must have retracted of their own accord, because they weren't out anymore. He knew he was supposed to keep the Sisters from unnecessary killing, but he honestly didn't care if they killed that prick - in fact, he hoped they did. An electrical shock to the balls? What kind of dirty fighter was he? 

Finally they released their grip and he collapsed to the floor like a sack of garbage, his cowboy hat finally falling off and rolling away. The Sisters made a noise of disgust as they looked at each other, and said, "Ick." 

"Beef - " 

"- jerky." 

"Kill him?" He was surprised he could talk. 

"No - " 

"-we" 

"-left some-" 

"-for you." They  said cheerfully, turning beaming smiles on him. Although they had gone back to their "normal" faces, they teeth and lips were still stained with blood, and that was a hell of a lot more creepy than their vamp faces. 

He grunted in bitter acknowledgment of their joke ( it was a joke, right? ), and as he attempted to gather the strength to stand, they ripped off their sun protective burqas and revealed their oddball wardrobe of bright turquoise Hawaiian shirts, black and white striped capri pants, and tan lug boots. It was the most butt ugly outfit he had ever seen, but he knew the Sisters were like that. They seemed to have no fashion sense at all ( were they colorblind?), but exactly who was going to criticize them for it? 

They came over and helped him to his feet, and not for the first time Logan wondered which one was Belinda and which one was Beatrice. Bob had said those were their names, and seemed to be able to tell them apart ( how? ), but if you asked them outright, they just said yes to both names. Insane and smart asses - what a combination. 

They let him go, and he wrapped his arms protectively around his still aching chest, waiting to catch his breath before he moved again. The bullet wounds - healed but still there - ached, and his balls ached, and he really felt like sitting down before doing something as complicated as walking, but he knew they didn't have a lot of time to waste. And besides, did he really want to look wimpy in front of the Weirds? He had a feeling they capitalized on any weakness they could find, even if it was just out of habit. "Come on, let's find the fucking thing and get out of here," he growled, forcing himself to move. Since it was so cool in here, he considered going out and retrieving his dropped shirt and jacket, but fuck it - he'd grab them on the way out. 

"Live-" 

"-to-" 

"-serve." They said, stealing Bob's occasional smart ass phrase. 

This place was supposedly the "holy" sepulcher of a sorcerer named Arturo Gonzalez de la Vasquez ( sounded more like a Vegas stage magician ), who had supposedly been entombed with the Sword of Vardalos, which had killed him. Vardalos was a demon that took up a symbiotic but ultimately fatal relationship with sorcerers and sorceresses, a "familiar" who increased their powers but at the expense of gravely shortening their lifespans. The Sword of Vardalos was supposedly imbued with enough of its power to kill anything with the slightest touch. 

Bob said that was a steaming pile of shit. 

But there was an artifact of actual power and worth in his grave, but it was unknown to the Cult of Vardalos, that protected sites "sacred" to the demon and those it had "blessed" with its powers. And that was what he and the Weirds were here to collect. 

He followed the Weirds into the main room of the mausoleum, which was furnished with a folding card table ( currently with a half eaten stick of beef jerky and a portable t.v. showing a Spanish soap opera on its top ) and two metal folding chairs. There was a cooler tucked into the far corner, but nothing else. 

Logan shoved the table aside, making the jerky stick roll off, and knocked aside the chair on his side. "Is he grave under here?" 

Bob warned him it was sealed beneath concrete, and he might not smell it; he was right, he just smelled the scents of the two living guards and the demonic inhabitants. The Weirds paced around the tiny room for a moment, staring down at the stone floor as if they could see through it. After a moment, they stopped in the middle of the room, and said, "Right-" 

"-here." 

"You grabbin' shovels and joinin' me?" 

They gave his stereo vacuous smiles that were infinitely creepy in their emptiness, and replied, "What-" 

"-shovels?" 

He gave them an evil look that he knew would have absolutely no effect on them, then got down on his knees, popped his claws, and started slicing through the stone. 

It was after the first slash that he smelled what could only have been a moldering and long desiccated corpse, and he wasn't even through all the concrete yet. At least it was long past the bloated with noxious gases phase. 

It didn't take that long to finally breach his grave, it just felt like it. And while they were absolutely no help at all as far as digging through the crap went, but to be fair they did remove some of the bigger slabs of rock and concrete as soon as he carved them away. He was glad he didn't put his shirt back on, because soon he was sweating like a pig again, and the cool mausoleum seemed hot. 

Finally his claws cut through metal and wood, and the scent of stale decomposition hit his nose. He had to look away for a moment - even aged beyond true deliquescence, it was almost overwhelming to his sensitive nose - and as soon as he was sure he had it under control, he went back to clearing enough space to carve the casket open. "So Bob really thinks there's somethin' in here that'll help us find Ares and Kumiho, huh?" He knew this already, but he was just making conversation. The Sisters could stare at you in complete and utter silence for hours; they really loved their "cuter and creepier and deadlier than thou" schtick. 

"So - " 

"- he - " 

"-says. And - " 

"-Bob is - " 

"-never wrong. Except - " 

"-when he is." 

He looked up at them, scowling. "Was that a joke?" 

"Are - " 

"-you-" 

"-laughing?" They gave him those stereo grins again, the ones that always brought to mind the old Sex Pistols song "Pretty Vacant". But they were not dumb, and they were far from innocent; it was just their guise to lure in prey. 

And they worked for the good guys? Well, in theory - there would always be something extremely evil about them. Perversely, he was sure that was why Bob liked them. Evil, yes, but extraordinarily effective. 

Once he carved an opening in the hood of the coffin, they reached in the hole and helped him pull away the lid, revealing something that was more random collections of bone than actual skeleton, and a few black beetles climbed into the eye sockets of the skull, avoiding fresh air. 

What may have once been the hands of Arturo Gonzalez de la Vasquez was roughly clasped around the jeweled hilt of a dull silver sword, now tarnished with age and the byproducts of decomposition. "Which one is it?" He asked them, not completely sure. 

"That -" 

"-amber-" 

"-stone, second-" 

"-from the -" 

"-left." 

He retracted all but one claw, and delicately used the tip to pry the jewel out of the setting. It popped out easily, as if eager to leave, and it was hard to believe that this thing, hardly bigger than a marble, would be the solution to their problem. Well, one of them anyways. 

And hell, it goddamn better well be after all this trouble. Did Bob have any idea what it was like traveling in the Mexican desert with two cranky, crazy vampires, dressed like Ibn Saud's very fanatically repressed wives? 

He stood up, holding the amber gemstone in fist, and retracted his claws. "Cover up, girls - we're outta here." 

"It's-" 

"-about-" 

"-time." They sighed, as if this was all his fault. 

Man - first chance he got, he was kicking Bob's ass over this. 

3 

    As usual, The Way Station was dark and cool, and seemingly separated from the outside world by a barrier that could only be felt ... or heard, once you were past the barrier and the music flooded in. This time they were greeted by Alice In Chain's "Would" blasting from the jukebox, at decibels loud enough to liquifying fillings. Logan was glad he didn't have fillings - or at least he didn't to the best of his knowledge. 

Lau, the man mountain of a bartender, was standing placidly behind the bar, polishing a beer mug with a rag that was just mildly blood stained, and gave him and the Sisters a terse nod as they entered the scarcely populated bar/office/whatever the hell it was exactly. Hard to say; he'd been here quite a few times, and he still wasn't sure he understood everything that was going on under its roof. 

"If I could, would you?" Bob howled along with the song, and then waved them over from his table in the back, where he was working on the ubiquitous iBook. The song ended, and kicked into a slightly less grungy song, although it was still way too loud. How did it not penetrate the mystical barrier? "I sense you got it. Good on ya," Bob said, throwing them a wink and a grin. 

Logan sighed, and collapsed so heavily in a wooden chair that it almost gave way beneath him. "Yeah, i did, and I ain't takin' the Sisters into the desert anymore." 

"Oh-" 

"-but-" 

"-we like-" 

"-you, Logan." 

"You have pretty-" 

"-nipples." They said, one of them trailing her fingernails on the back of his neck. 

Bob laughed, and Logan rested his arms on the table before dropping his head onto them in a posture of defeat. Why couldn't he kill them again? Why? Just two snickts and he'd never be bothered by them again. 

"Now girls, I thought I was the object of your affections," Bob replied, trying not to chuckle. 

"We-" 

"-love-" 

"-you, Bob." 

"But Logan's-" 

"-fun. He really-" 

"-knows how to-" 

"-show a girl a-" 

"-good time." 

"You say that about anybody who'll take you out brawlin'," Bob countered. 

"True." 

"We-" 

"-have low-" 

"-standards." 

Bob chuckled again, and then suggested, "Why don't you help yourself to some cups of blood? You deserve it." 

"Want - " 

"-a-" 

"-beer, Logan?" 

"Go away before I kill you," he muttered into the scarred tabletop. 

One of them ran her hand through his hair. "You're-" 

"-so-" 

"-funny." They said, but thankfully he heard them walk away, towards the bar. 

"I think someones are smitten," Bob said cheerfully. 

Logan looked up at him, and gave him the deadliest glare he could muster. "If I ever have to buddy up with them again, one of us is going to die first." 

Bob laughed again, even though he had to know he was serious."But they're crazy about you, mate. You can't buy that kind of loyalty." 

"Or insanity." 

"Okay, yeah, that's part of the package. But no one rides for free, right?" He raised an eyebrow at Logan's continued death glare, and wisely changed the subject. "So where's the talisman of Vardalos?" 


	2. Part 2

Logan pulled the amber gem out of his pocket, and slapped it on the table, putting his forehead back down on his other arm and never once looking up at Bob. "This better be it." 

He heard Bob shift in his chair, and after a moment, he said, "Nope-it's green." 

He looked up at him in disbelief, only to find Bob giving him that Cheshire Cat smart ass grin, his white teeth nearly blinding him even in the dim light of the bar. "Just havin' ya on, mate-that's it." 

Logan's eyes narrowed to deadly slits. "Don't even joke. Do you know what I went through for that fucking thing?" 

"The Plano de los Caballos Mestenos with a couple of grumpy vampires," Bob replied, although not flippantly - if he had dared to be flippant, Logan would have been forced to smash his head into his computer. "And I'm really sorry about that, but Helga's off after the amulet of Ulm." 

"You're making that up." 

"Am not." 

"Then why does it sound like something in a Monty Python sketch?" 

Bob thought about that a moment, staring blankly at the monitor."Oh, you may have a point there. Well, I have no control over the names of these things. That wasn't my department." He went back to typing on his keyboard, the look on his face so serious Logan knew it was false. 

"Another joke?" 

"Of course." 

"Heads-" 

"-up," the Sisters said. Logan looked at them just in time to see a beer bottle flying towards him at an insane speed. Still, he managed to snag it in mid air, and pretend they really weren't trying to bean him with it. He scowled at them, and from where they were sitting at the bar with their cups of blood, they gave him those stereo creepy smiles again. Man, never working with them again would still not be enough. 

He put the bottle on the table and turned his gaze on Bob. "So what's with all this crap? How does this help us?" 

"I'm building a finder." 

"Huh?" The Sisters had thrown him an imported beer with a lid that needed an opener, so he briefly popped a claw and pried the cap off with the tip before retracting it inside his hand. If anyone noticed, no one looked twice - but then again, this was  a demon bar. What qualified as strange here? 

"Basically a mystical GPS locator. It ain't like I can go pick one up at Kmart." 

"So while I was off with them, getting a cattle prod in the balls, you were sitting on your ass surfing the web?" 

Bob looked up, startled. "You got a cattle prod in the balls? Good god man, how the hell are you walkin'?" 

"Not easily." 

"Jesus. Get out of here, go catch a break while you can, okay? And I thought you smellin' of blood and cordite was bad enough." 

Logan sat back and drank the entire beer in a single gulp; he was still thirsty from that desert heat, on top of all the fighting and digging. It wasn't a bad kind either - that helped. 

He set the empty bottle down heavily on the table and sighed. "I dunno," he admitted, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He was tired, but he didn't know if he should waste his time that way - according to Bob, once things got going, they couldn't stop. 

"Got a shower and a bed in the back if you really don't think you can make it back to your place." 

That made up his mind for him. That and the continued ache in his balls and chest - there was nothing like multiple high velocity bullets to ruin your day. But a cattle prod to the balls pretty much ruined your year. "Nah, I'll be okay. Let me know the instant we're ready." 

"Absolutely. Can't do it without you," Bob agreed, then gave him that mischievous wink before turning his attention back to his computer. 

Maybe that was the problem here; maybe it would have been better for them all if he could. 

*** 

    Once Logan got back to his cheapo motel room, he considered taking a shower to wash the rest of the blood off, but he was remarkably enervated. He wanted to blame the heat - it was a hot day in Los Angeles too - but he'd been running hard on adrenaline and irritation since Mexico, and it was finally starting to flag. 

He laid down on his lumpy mattress, which reeked of the industrial detergents all cheap motels and hotels used on their blankets and sheets, and listened to the old air conditioner crammed in the window rattle like a freight train. At least it was loud enough to cover up the street noises, and the hooker and the john in the next room finishing up their business transaction. He stared up at the old acoustic ceiling tiles - he didn't think it rained enough for water stains to appear...but then again, if those weren't water stains, he didn't want to know what the hell those were - and figured as soon as the ache subsided to a duller thud, he'd get up and take a shower. 

But he fell asleep before he could. 

He only realized he was asleep when he "woke up", only to find he wasn't in his motel bed. The bed he was in was much more comfortable, and he was laying on his side, looking at a wall with some strange neon palm tree hanging on it ... oh shit. 

He was shirtless and achy, but it was an ache spread out to different parts of his chest and back, and it just felt ... different somehow, in a way he couldn't name. He felt Mariko get into bed beside him, conform her body to his, her breasts pressing against his back as she draped an arm around his waist. "I hate this," she whispered, her breath warm against the nape of his neck. 

"I know," he murmured, putting his hand over hers. "I ain't thrilled about it either." 

"Being a bodyguard doesn't mean you should be a human shield." 

"Sometimes the Takabes bring it down to that." 

"You're not indestructible. You can't keep doing this to yourself." 

"I said I'd keep your family alive to the best of my ability." 

"Not at the expense of yours." 

"Actually, yeah - check the fine print." 

She pressed her face into the back of his neck, interlaced her fingers with his, and said, "I don't want to lose you, Logan, and I hate seeing you hurt so badly." 

"I recover." 

"That's not the point, and you know it." 

He did, but he didn't know what to tell her that would make her happy, so he didn't say anything. He just drifted in and out of a loose semi-consciousness while his healing factor made his whole torso feel like it was on fire, somewhere beneath the deep bruising. But he was aware of her, the smell of her, the warmth of her body, the comfort of her touch, and he knew why he was putting himself through this. It was all for her, yet he knew if he said that she'd be furious, or guilt ridden, or both, and he didn't want her to see this as "her" fault. He had no idea how he managed to get along all these years without her - they all seemed so empty now. 

He drifted into consciousness feeling her kiss the back of his neck, and he drew he hand to his lips and kissed her palm, then kissed her wrist, savoring the taste of her skin. Suddenly he wasn't feeling the blood loss so acutely anymore. He shifted carefully before turning over, giving her fair warning, and he was hardly on his back before her mouth covered his, kissing him passionately, her hands gliding over the newly healed skin of his chest. She felt so warm, and in spite of the residual burning in his newly healed muscles and bones, he wanted her warmth like a drug. 

But when she pulled away from him, he realized something was wrong, and he saw what instantly. 

It was not Mariko looking down at him but a woman he had never seen before ... but why did she seem familiar anyways? 

She had mid length straight black hair that seemed to hug her face in a flattering manner, setting off her creamy skin tone and the flecks of hazel and gold in her otherwise green eyes. She smiled at him sadly, her beestung red lip revealing the slightest hint of a scar on her top lip, so pale and faint with age it was almost invisible. There was something vaguely exotic about her ( Eurasian popped to mind ), and the way tiny lines gathered in the corners of her almost feline eyes, he knew she was at least in her thirties, although she hardly looked it. "They really did make you forget all about me, didn't they?" She said, her delicate soprano voice betraying a tinge of a Canadian accent. 

Logan woke up and stared up at the ceiling, hoping that had been dream infringing on a memory. 

He grabbed a pillow and pressed it over his face, using both arms, hoping somewhat obliquely that he could smother himself to death. No, no, no! He was tired of this, tired of mysteries his mind coughed up without explanation, ones he didn't dare trust. 

But he knew ... he knew that face, that voice. He didn't know how. But he felt that dull knife twist in his gut again, the one he felt when he thought about Mariko ... who was she? 

He kept telling himself she could have been a telepathic implant, something someone made up to torment him, and yet, even so, he knew one thing - she was another person he had failed. He failed so many, so goddamn much, so often, irrevocably, usually fatally. Damn it! 

He screamed into the pillow, a sound of pure rage and anguish that hardly made him feel any better. He wanted it to stop - that's all he wanted. He wanted clear answers, things he knew he could trust with his heart and his gut, since he knew he could no longer trust his mind, but part of him was afraid to look for answers. He was afraid because he was afraid he'd trip over all the bodies in his wake; the killed, the wounded, the captive, and the let down - betrayers and betrayed alike. 

He hurt, and he knew without knowing how that he had hurt others in turn. Bully and slave; victim and tormentor. What he didn't know was how much of that was of his own free will, and how much of that was others pulling his strings. And how many people he had left behind, living or dead. 

Something inside him felt fundamentally broken, and he loathed the feeling. he wanted to fix it, or numb it, or make it go away - some part of him seemed to think violence would fill the gap, or balm the wound, but it hadn't, and he wasn't sure it ever would. He would never get the feeling to go away, and he would never be "fixed", never be whole. "So live with it, Logan," he muttered into the pillow. "Live with it!" 

He lived with so much - what was one more? 

He clutched the pillow harder to his face, unable to draw breath, causing a familiar sensation of suffocation tightness in his chest, but pain was good; even the nascent sense of panic in his brain, the autonomic response that told he'd been suffocated before, drowned before, been deprived of air and left to die, was good. Because it meant he was still capable of feeling something. 

He wasn't completely broken, not yet. 

4 

    Logan found a seedy bar up the street from his motel ( no surprise - this place, just south of Sunset, was a sleaze pit all the way ), a regular human bar as opposed to demon, and sat in a table at the back, swilling down awful beers and soaking in the general, slimy ambiance. He'd need a shower just to wash the smell of this place out of his clothes. 

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the happy hour patrons ( more correctly for this place, it should have been called "Share the misery" hour ) hadn't started coming in yet, but this wasn't a bar for the casual; this was a bar for depressives and low lifes, obsessive drinkers who had simply given up and ceded themselves body and soul to their inner demons. It showed in the dark wood panel, darkened further by years of cigarette smoke, body odor, and despair, intangibles that always left marks whether people knew it or not. He could smell illness in here too, livers on the verge of failure, cancers, cells dying en masse; people in the grip of slow motion death. Sometimes you could see it in the color of their skin, in the sallowness of their eyes, but most time it was obvious only to him - the afflicted wouldn't know until it was far too late. 

He was enjoying a little wallow in misery on their behalf, trying to block out the basketball game on the t.v. over the bar and the tinny rock music spilling from a radio somewhere down the hall leading to the reeking restrooms, and that's when he smelled someone familiar and too clean for this place. He sighed, propping an elbow on the scarred table and resting his head in his hand, and said, "You are stalking me, aren't you?" 

"Now come now, I went by your motel and you weren't there," Bob said, taking the seat opposite him. None of the sad sacks littering the stools around the bar noticed the young looking pretty boy in the leather pants and the "My god is bigger than your god" t-shirt ( Bob really did like his little jokes, didn't he?) had stepped seemingly out of nowhere, never having come in the door. "I followed the trail of flop sweat and despair to here." He looked around, taking in the atmosphere with a long glance, and said, "Wow. This place wants to make you sniff glue and stick your head in a toaster oven, doesn't it?" 

"Thinkin' of makin' the Way Station over in its image?" 

"Oh yeah. This place'd be the ant's pants to the demon strata." 

Ant's pants? He wasn't even going to ask. "Are you ready for the finder or whatever?" 

"No, not yet, but Hel's inbound." He settled back in his chair, pushing it back slightly to accommodate his long legs as he extended them beneath the table, and folded his hands on his flat stomach, looking at him in a way that Logan really didn't like. 

"Don't look at my thoughts," Logan growled. But he knew it was probably too late. 

The way Bob cocked his head, he knew he was right. "Places like this really ain't good for you. You let the misery overwhelm your senses, so you can get the focus off your own, but really you're just increasing it without knowing it." 

"Don't analyze me." 

In a lower voice, he said, "I can try and find her for ya." 

Logan felt like he'd taken a sucker punch straight to the heart. He glanced away, so Bob didn't catch the wince, but why did he bother? Bob knew everything; he was Bob. Looking at you, you were nothing but an open book, with no secrets, no thoughts too private to escape his view, and it wasn't even his fault really - it was just the way he was. "Please, Bob, I don't - " 

"I know it hurts, mate. It does help if you try and spread it around a bit, and I don't mean by causin' pain to others." 

Logan glared at him. "Just shut up, okay?" 

But of course he didn't - why did he even bother telling him to shut up? "Thoughts in general aren't linear; memories are messy things. And in a case like yours, that's especially true." 

"A case like mine?" He didn't want to ask, but again he felt he had to. 

"Where the engrams are regenerating spontaneously. You could get them in any order at all." 

He snorted derisively. "Yippee." 

"You do realize, mate, that for all intents and purposes, you should be a vegetable. How many telepaths have tap danced around your cranium? And that ain't even counting the drugs. They took everything they could from; your brains should be the consistency of undercooked scrambled eggs. But you healed even from that, and continue to do so. You're a bloody marvel, you just don't realize it." 

"Oh yeah, I feel lucky." He gulped down the rest of his weak beer, and on sheer bloody minded impulse he threw the beer mug across the room. It shattered explosively on the wall behind the bar ... and no one even looked up from their drinks. He quirked an eyebrow at Bob, but he knew what he was going to say. 

"They can't hear us. We don't exist to these people." 

"I don't exist at all." 

"You do. You're out there somewhere. Maybe if you weren't so flamin' paranoid and good at covering your tracks, we'd have had more by now. But the people you remember - there's the key. They usually made no attempt to disappear." 

"And that probably helped get them dead. That, and knowing me." 

Bob shifted slightly in his seat, as if it finally dawned on him how uncomfortable they were. "If anyone's entitled to a pity party, it's you - " 

"I ain't having a pity party," he snapped, then added, "But if I deserve one, why not leave me to it?" 

He sat forward,shifting his chair closer so he could rest his hands on the table. "Because I need ya focused, mate. These beings were takin' on will be looking to take advantage of every weakness they can find, and I need you ready to get past it. I know you've sucked up a lot of pain, but things may get really ugly before they amp up to totally horrible." 

Logan grimaced wryly, almost not trying to let his anger show before simply giving up on it - Bob knew anyways. "I can carry my end of things, all right? I told ya I'd help - I must be insane, but I did - and I don't fall down on the job. I keep my word." 

"I know that. But I hate to see you hurting so much now before we even get started." 

There was so much empathy in Bob's eyes that he hated it; he wanted to throw the table over and bludgeon him with it. But it wouldn't do any good, because even if Bob let him, he'd probably still feel sorry for him. "I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth, trying to fight down the raged that roiled through him. To no useful effect - what could he do against Bob? And why was he agreeing to this insanity? If he couldn't do anything to Bob, how could he possibly do anything Ares and Kumiho, and whoever else was in their god parade? "Just drop it." 

Bob leaned forward, folding his hands, and he looked oddly serious for him. "You wanna know what scares me, Logan? I've never told anyone about this, but it was back in the Botany Bay days, before I married Maggie, before I lost her and the kids. I once had this dream that the whole Sydney Town colony was dead - not a big shock, considering the rampant starvation at the time. But they had been dead so long their  bones had turned to dust; I was alone in this ghost town with the ashes of the dead blowin' in my face. And the longer it went on, I finally realized it wasn't just the colony that was dead. I didn't have my powers yet, but I could feel it in here." He tapped his chest with his fist, and for the first time, Logan noticed tears welling in his eyes. "Everyone everywhere was dead. Everything was - the entire planet was dead. Not just people either - animals, insects, plants. I was the lone living inhabitant of a ghost town on a literal ghost world. Even the sea ... it was so still it looked like glass. There wasn't even bacteria, unless you counted me; I was it. I was more permanently alone than anything that ever had existed." Bob must have noticed he was tearing up, because he let out the slightest scoff of a laugh, and brushed the tears  away with his fist. "Look at that - a hundred years or so after the fact, and it still gets to me." A stray tear tracked down his cheek, and, to Logan's surprise, he saw it wasn't clear, but a faint, delicate blue - like an azure drop of the sky frozen on his face. He knew Bob was inhuman, but it was the little things like that that really hit it home, in a way that removing them from reality somehow couldn't. Maybe he was just so accustomed to the bizarre, it was never the big time freak show he noticed, but the devils in the details. "My point is - and I do have one - is that that will probably be the fear they use against me. I want you to be ready for that." 

"Do you think I can help you somehow?" His anger had drained away, sputtered out, and Logan wondered if he had told him that little story to do just that. Bob was crafty like that - sometimes he came at you head on, and sometimes he snuck in the back door. And they called Scott a "tactician"? He had absolutely nothing on Bob. 

"I'm gonna do somethin' different with the power transfer. You know I have to give you some to keep you alive, right?" Logan nodded tersely. He knew the score of being his "avatar" - didn't like it, but he knew it. "I'm going to put an emergency hatch - so to speak - in it this time. If it - if I - start goin' balls up, I need you to take over." 

Logan raised an eyebrow and carefully combed that statement over in his mind, wondering if he actually meant that. "Take over? Take over you?" 

Bob nodded, seemingly in control of emotions again. "Yes. But only when it all goes arse about face, so no tryin' to play around, got it?" 

He didn't bother to hide his smirk. "I'll do my best." 

Bob matched his smirk with one of his own, like he was daring him to try it, and then he sobered abruptly, like a new wrinkle had occurred to him. But as he began to talk, Logan realized that wasn't it. "You know, you're the only person who can really grasp it. A lot of people - Humans and otherwise - want immortality, but they really have no idea what it means. They don't realize that it means watching everything - everything you loved, everything you know, everything you ever created - die around you. Destruction is as much a part of life as creation, but there's something about watchin' it happen all around you while you wait untouched, and know that that's never gonna happen to you ... it's empty, and somewhere beyond fear. The only people who want immortality have never really looked eternity in the face, and seen how cold it is." 

Logan felt that chill now, all the way down to his toes, wicked enough to make his balls shrivel. He was right; he knew he was right down to the pit of his soul. 

Who knew he and Bob had something in common? 

*** 

    They'd been back at the Way Station barely five minutes when Helga came in the door, carrying a machete in one hand and something bloody in the other. 

She was in what must have been her "ninja outfit" - everything from her hip hugger jeans ( better for her tail ) to her sneakers to her sleeveless t-shirt were pitch black, and made her green hair and skin that much more attractively jade - and she was lightly splattered with red drops that could only be blood, although it didn't smell Human to Logan. 

She slammed the bloody thing in her hand on the table in front of them as they both stood up, not so much out of politeness but out of the need to avoid being splashed with demon corpuscles. "I hate Krenlon demons," she said, wiping her bloody hand on the thigh of her pants. 

The core of the bloody mess seemed to be something as much metal as bone, and Logan felt his stomach twist. If adamantium could be cut, it could be a piece of himself he was looking at. 

"Where'd he have it surgically implanted?" Bob asked, unfazed as always. 

"Inside his left radius and ulna. Ain't gonna be using them again." 

"Hope he's a righty," Logan interjected. Actually, he didn't care much - this Ulm thing was an evil gimcrack of some sort, that imbued its possessor with great strength. But not great enough to be of any use against Helga and her machete of doom, it seemed. 

"Well,I'll clean this sucker up and get crackin' on making the finder. Cheers, darlin'." Bob didn't touch the thing; he made an odd hand gesture over it, and the thing disappeared. Probably a wise choice. 

"No way josé," Helga said, a stubborn set to her jaw. Her peridot eyes blazed with anger. "You are not leavin' me out this time." 

Bob sighed, and said in his most placating voice, "Hel - " 

She didn't let him finish. "Get me a sponsor, power me up. I am not sitting out this godfight." 

"Love, I don't want you hurt in my name." 

"But me gettin' hurt is okay?" Logan asked facetiously. He knew it wasn't that simple, but he had to say it anyways. 

As it was, they ignored him. She scowled at Bob, and while her face was lovely ( albeit green ), she could look pretty damn demonic when upset. "Bob, damn you, if you love me at all you're not gonna stand in my way. And you ain't even gonna consider pushing me." As if to emphasize the point, she shook the machete in a slightly threatening manner. 

Bob raised an eyebrow, but he was smiling very faintly, as if impressed by her basic audacity. That was quite possible - Bob seemed to love people for all the wrong reasons. "Do you care what side of the fence they're on?" 

She shrugged. "As long as they're on our side, who gives a fuck?" 

He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, as if this part of the pre-freak show was over. "Lovely. Well, clean up hon, I'll see if I can call in my chits. But of course there's one more problem, if I can trust what I found in the Keskarain Arcana." 

Logan rolled his eyes. There was always one more thing. "What now?" 

"We're missing a piece. The "heart of Agrona" - a bloodstone, apparently in the private collection of a very rich and very paranoid Bolla demon in Shepherd's Bush. And he has spells protecting against people usin' spells to 'port in, and against the use of psychic energy, and all sorts of crap. Mucho freako." 

"England?" Logan wondered. 

"Know another one?" Bob replied. A fair point. 

"But he's got nothin' against people just walkin' in there and taking it?" 

"Why would he? Who would dare?" 

That was a good point, but Logan had an idea. "Can you get this all rolling while I go and get it?" He was tired of waiting around - if they were going to do this thing, he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. 

Bob grimaced sympathetically. "Bollas are pretty nasty, mate. Even you will have a fight on your hands - and I ain't even counting all the mechanical and wetware security he's bound to have. He has a huge collection of occult artifacts and dangerous arcana." 

Wetware? He must have meant people - or, more appropriately, demons - on guard. "Well, I'm not lookin' for a fight. I think I know a professional who could help us out. Get me a picture of this bloodstone?" 

Bob gave him that open, rangy grin, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Sure I can't hire you on full time?" 

"You can't afford me," Logan riposted, as Helga chuckled appreciatively. 

Well hell, there had to be something Bob couldn't buy. 

5 

    She answered the door a half minute after he knocked, and she must have known it was him, as she instantly threw her arms around his neck, and gave him a passionate kiss. At least he hoped he hadn't shown up at a bad time and interrupted a tryst. 

He pushed her back gently so he could breathe, and said, "I bet it'd be stupid to ask if you missed me." 

Srina gave him a crooked but sweet smile, her purple lipstick ( not quite matching her magenta hair, but close ) slightly smudged from the kiss. Logan wondered how much he was wearing now. "I just read your e-mail. How'd you get here so fast?" 

"Would you believe I was teleported in?" He said, as she stood back and let him inside. 

Her flat above the bookstore was pretty much the same as it had been the last time he was here; airy and light, with an eclectic mix of expensive knick-knacks and used furniture. Even though it was night here, her flat was so well lit it seemed like day, and he could see the lights of King's Road through her gauzy curtain liners as the Barenaked Ladies played faintly in the background and pictures flickered soundlessly on her big screen television. No wonder she had it muted - it looked like a documentary about cheese making, unless this was an advert. "Uh, okay," she said, sounding like she was humoring him as she threw all the locks on her door. "So what's the deal, Logan?" 

He'd emailed her about an hour ago, as Bob looked up a picture of the heart of Agrona. He and Helga had looked up as much information about this Bolla demon - he went by the name Desmond Bolton, and seemed to have made a fortune on the tabloid market ( insert your own jokes there - Logan had wondered if he was responsible for all those "Page Three" girls with the off center nipples ) - and through "connections" of hers, she found a plethora of stuff on his "compound", including a general schematic of the physical security set up of the place. He shifted the knapsack off his shoulder and put it  on the loveseat, as he turned to face her, wiping her lipstick off his face with the back of his hand. "I got this friend, Bob, who needs a specific artifact in a big ass hurry, and I told him you were professional and you were good. I was hopin' to talk you into an emergency gig." 

"And sway me with your charms?" She said, giving him a mock seductive look as she went to the loveseat, folding her legs beneath her as she sat down. She sat back lazily and draped an arm over the back of the seat, a magenta eyebrow raised as she visually appraised him. She was dressed casually in loose silk pants, black but decorated with Asian style red dragons, and an oversized grey t-shirt with a couple of holes in the collar from the sheer age of the thing. But somehow she still managed to look good. 

He sat on the opposite end of the loveseat, shifting the knapsack to his lap. "Would that work?" 

"Will you not break the handcuffs this time?" She asked, lifting her eyebrows in an exaggeratedly suggestive manner. 

He smirked. "I dunno. How strong are the new ones?" Before she could answer, he opened the knapsack, and handed it to her. "Although Bob did give me this for you, since this is how you make your living." 

She took the bag, and looked inside curiously. She was quiet for a long moment. "This is cash." 

"Yeah. He believes in payin' his contractors." 

She pulled out a stack of money, quickly rifled through it to assess its worth ( and make sure it wasn't counterfeit ), and then counted the number of remaining neatly rubber banded stacks of money in the bag. She counted it twice, and then looked at him, slack jawed and wide eyed. "Logan, this is a million dollars." 

"Uh huh. I didn't know your fee." He had no idea why Bob had a safe full of British pounds, but maybe he didn't - maybe he zapped it in. He hadn't suggested a million, but Bob felt that was a nice round figure that no one ever said no to. 

She closed the bag, but kept it on her lap, hands over it protectively. "What the fuck do you want me to steal? The Crown Jewels?" 

"You'd do that for a million?" 

"No, unless it was for starters. What's the gig?" 

He told her as he pulled all the computer print out of the schematics out of his inner coat pocket. He unfolded them and showed them to her, and then gave her the photo of the heart of Agrona. It didn't look like much - like a big red lumpy rock with flecks of black in it, about the size of his fist - but according to the myth Bob told him, it channeled the energies of Agrona, a Celtic war goddess. Why Bob needed it for his finder he didn't bother to say. 

"So, I  bust in to this guy's fortress, steal this ugly fire opal, and that's it?" 

"Yeah." 

"For a million dollars?" 

"Are you tryin' to barter for a bonus?" 

"I'm not sure. You want this tonight?" 

"Well, from what we figured, the best time to hit the place is at the crack of dawn. Bolton's a Bolla demon, so he sleeps a lot, and his vampire guards have to pack it in before the sun's up, so the best time would be the shift change, after the vampires hit their crypts but before the Ressiks come on duty." 

Her plum colored eyes studied him skeptically. "More demon shit?" 

"More demon shit," he agreed ruefully. 

"But no werewolves?" 

"Not to my knowledge." 

She sighed, and opened the bag once more, looking at the money. Even Logan had to admit he'd have a hard time saying no to a million dollars cash thrown in his lap. "It can't be as easy as it looks." 

"I know. Want me to come with?" He was sort of planning to do so anyways. She knew nothing about vampires. 

"You'll cramp my style," she said, sarcastically dismissive. "If it's a simple smash and grab - cat burglar bollocks - it'll be a cinch." 

"I'm comin' with you anyways. I'll remain outside the estate grounds, just in case there's trouble, all right?" She looked like she was going to protest, so he didn't give her the chance. He pulled the communicator out of his pocket and held it out to her. "Wear this. It clips to your ear. If you get in over your head, just give me a shout." 


	3. Part 3

She took the piece of molded black plastic warily, and examined it like he might have just given her something poisonous. "So, I tell you I'm screwed, and you run in, claws bared, and kick the ass of everything that moves?" 

He shrugged. "Basically." 

Srina glanced  at the ear piece, the money, him, and then back again, thinking it over. Quite obviously it was insane, and since it was planned on the fly, there was humungous room for error, but Srina didn't use her power of invisibility ( to both the eye and to machines ) in a safe job. She was a thief, and judging from all the expensive stuff all over the place, a very good one. She lived dangerously, which was what he liked about her; she was a woman after his own heart. That, and she really liked to fuck, him especially. Finally, she looked up at him, and said, "Sounds like a plan." She closed the knapsack, and said, "Wanna beer?" 

"Sure." 

"Then go ahead and get one. Oh, get me one too, huh?" She replied, putting the bag on the floor and dropping the communicator inside. 

He sighed, but got up and got the cans of Guinness from the fridge. It was always interesting how the thing you most liked about a person could also be the most annoying. He tossed her a can, which she caught easily, and she said, "So we should head off about what, five?" 

"Is Shepherd's Bush far from here?" 

"No." 

"Okay, sounds good," he agreed, sitting back down on the loveseat and cracking open the can. He took a good, long swallow - god, he loved British beer - and settled back into the settee, allowing himself to relax for a moment. At least he felt comfortable around Srina, but he was starting to pick up a pattern - he felt more comfortable around women than men, for whatever that was worth. And he didn't know why, since he'd been attacked by women as well as men - no gender barrier in wanting a piece of him. He didn't really think it was some latent brand of sexism either; it was just, in his limited experience, women were generally more accepting of him, more willing to give him a break. They did not generally feel it was their macho duty to challenge the freak to an ass whooping contest. "So how you been, Spud?" 

"Good. No problems with the arse faces. I guess I was never on their radar for long." 

"Guess not. Good for you." 

They both had a swallow of their beers, and then she said, "I guess we have a couple hours to kill, huh?" 

His watch wasn't set to British time, but it was a curious thing - sometimes he would swear he could feel time; with no other sensory cues, he could guess the exact time, night or day, and be eerily on target. He didn't know what that meant, and honestly he didn't want to know. "Yeah." 

She shot him a sidelong glance, her purple eyes bright with mischief, and gave him a seductive smile. "How about a quickie?" 

He raised an eyebrow at her and grinned. See, that was one of the fun things about her. "Just a quickie? We have some time." 

She put her can of beer on the coffee table, and slid down to him, swinging her body over his as soon as she could. She straddled his lap, her knees digging into his hips, and slid her cold hands down inside the collar of his shirt, threatening to tear it. He wouldn't put it past her - she could get pretty rowdy. Not Helga rowdy, but pretty close; it was another one of her attractive qualities. Srina brought her face close to his, and gave him that devilishly playful grin that he knew promised a very fun night ahead. 

She didn't kiss him, but brushed her nose against his, bringing her lips close to his but not committing just yet. She liked to tease; she liked to play the game. That was fine with him; there was something immensely satisfying in engaging in a flirtation that would actually lead to something. "Maybe a couple of quickies," she said, gently catching his upper lip between her teeth before letting it go. 

"A couple? I ain't Superman, darlin'." 

"You're close enough," she said, finally kissing him. 

Oh yeah, thinking of Spud and her profession was the brightest idea he'd ever had. 

*** 

    The way the estate was planned, there was no way to approach it without being seen. Unless, of course, you could turn yourself invisible. 

Srina grabbed his arm and shared her power with him, at least until they reached a part of the front garden where he could skulk around unseen, and she went on alone. The communicator earpiece in his ear itched like hell, but he didn't dare rip it out and stomp it to pieces, because it was possible Srina might need help. So he lived with it, hidden within the rose garden, as motionless as a piece of statuary, trying not to sneeze. 

Bolton's house was about as large as Xavier's, although with more Gothic touches befitting a demon: shuttered windows, thick columns on the porch that served nothing but decorative touches, stone gargoyles crouching on the corner of every eave( he hoped these ones didn't spring to life like the ones back at the crypt ), and the roof itself was dramatically peaked, like a church. He supposed he was going for imposing, trying to intimidate through architecture, but having to stick to a general Human standard of design had robbed him of its power. Sometimes it was a real bitch trying to assimilate into a culture that wasn't really yours. He knew that from personal experience. 

There were no guards visible at the front, or patrolling the grounds, but why would there be? That would be terribly suspicious unless it was a government installation or a military base, but Logan could feel the eyes of cameras, hear their faint hums, and knew there were probably demonic eyes on the case as well. So he remained motionless behind a thick cluster of American Beauties, kneeling rather than crouching on the dewy ground because it was slightly more comfortable in the long term. That was the thing - he knew he could be kind of impatient, but when it mattered, when he wanted to be, he could wait for hours; never moving, hardly blinking, breathing slow, like he was in a meditative trance. He sometimes wondered if he was, if maybe Jean could slap some electrodes on him and they could see if he really was entering some semi-autonomic alpha wave state, but to be honest, he didn't want the others to know. He didn't know why exactly, it was just ... he didn't know. It seemed revealing in a way he couldn't explain, not even to himself. 

Even in this unique state of watchful tranquility, he was aware of the passage of time, of the dawn causing the sky to slowly cycle through varying shades of blue, with a washed out fringe of pink and orange creeping in at the edges. A clear day, but even he could smell the pending rain on the wind, clouds not yet formed or not close enough to see just yet, and feel the ozone charge of a storm about to be born. It  was getting too light, the Ressiks would be here soon, and while he knew he could take care of them with no problem, he was concerned about Srina. Even if she was cloaked, could they smell her in her "Nightshade" form, like he could? 

He heard soft footsteps heading towards him, smelled someone familiar, and then heard, whispered low in his earpiece, "What a freak show in there. But I got it. Now let's get the fuck out of here." 

Logan was instantly relieved, but didn't move until Srina put a hand on his arm. Now he could see her, but her eyes were all black, meaning she had simply phased him into her power, and he was now invisible too. "Thinking about renegotiating your fee?" He asked, seeing the sour look on her face. 

"I'm thinkin' about it, but let's get the hell out of here first." 

He couldn't argue with that. 

6 

    He had to promise Srina, before she'd let him go, that he'd come back as soon as he could and treat her to both dinner and one night as her "love slave"; he had no idea what the latter entailed, but it sounded like it had great potential. Logan drew the line at leaving his socks for "socksnnoses", though - he accused her of being "socknnoses", but she denied it, and claimed to be "clawfuxer" instead. Oh, he so didn't want to know, but he hoped that was a joke. 

When Bob zapped him back to L.A., time was reversed once more - it was very late at night there, and he could feel his internal body clock reeling at the sudden change, but like nearly everything with him, he adapted quickly; he barely noticed the lag. 

But things had really changed here. 

Bob met him to take the stone from him, shirtless but now "wearing" body paint on most of his chest and his upper arms. It was bright paint - bloody red and Belial blood blue, daffodil yellow and ghostly white and tar black -  
in all sorts of patterns and symbols that made him think of Aboriginal cave paintings, Maori tribal marks, and Norse runic symbols. They covered his torso from diaphragm to collarbone - black flames and snakes of red, blue, and yellow curling around towards his back and up towards his heart; swirls of colors and Runic symbols in a straight line across his abdomen, almost but not quite spelling out a word in an exotic and unearthly tongue. On his left upper arm was an even row of connected black triangles that almost looked like inverted fangs, and in the center of his forehead was a small vertical line of bright blue bisecting the exact center of his forehead; it was the same color as his eyes, and Logan guessed it was his own blood. "Don't you look fancy," he quipped, continuing to study him warily as he handed him the potato sized heart of Agrona. 

"Had to mystic up to do this whole ritual," Bob explained, taking the stone. 

"Do I have to?" He asked. He really didn't want to get painted up -  he felt weird enough as it was. 

"Nah, don't worry. I just need to put my mark on ya." He drew his thumb across the blue mark on his forehead, and then, before Logan could properly dodge out of the way ( he really thought he was kidding ), Bob smeared his thumb in a parallel line under his right eye. 

It was just like the time Bob shared his telepathy with him - it was like a lightning bolt of pure blue energy exploded inside his mind, and he cursed and lurched back, grabbing his head. It took a moment for the shock to stop reverberating through his neurons and his eyes to focus again, but once his senses came back to him, he realized it was Bob's blood - he could smell it. But, oddly, it was tingling under the thin skin of his eye, like it was a drug or a small electrical charge, something soaking through his flesh. "You could have warned me," he snapped, looking up at him. He wanted to wipe it off, but he had the idea he should - and possibly couldn't. 

"There's really no bracing for that kind of power transfer," he admitted, with a sympathetic grimace. 

"You could have at least pretended," he groused. "Woulda been polite." Unlike the last time, when Bob "hid" the energy in his mind, Logan was very much aware of it now - maybe because he's had it before, or because Bob let him. Either way, it was like a swirling mass of energy barely confined by his skull, and for a moment he would have sworn he could see wisps of electric blue at the edge of his vision, pulsing in a shape reminiscent of capillaries, infusing itself into his veins. Any remaining weariness from time lag and sex with Srina disappeared instantly; he felt charged and powerful. 

"Sorry, mate. Think you're ready?" 

"As I'll ever be." 

Bob nodded, and turned to lead him into a room he didn't even knew existed in the Way Station, but that was not the most startling thing. It was the paint on Bob's back that made him pause - he had a set of wings painted on his back; bright Belial blue with black, extending from his shoulder blades and tapering down to the small of his back. Logan thought something about a guy with wings sounded vaguely familiar, but it wasn't as strong as the feeling that wings looked very much at home on Bob; he may have had a set at one time, if only to play with someone's head. 

He led him into the room that may have been a janitor's closet, except Logan paused with one foot over the threshold, grabbing on to the door jamb to keep upright as he realized,"What the fuck happened to the floor?" 

Where there should have been a floor was a a big mass of swirling pink and ocher clouds, like the depiction of an acid trip in a bad '60's psychedelic movie. He considered for a moment it was glass, with this stuff swirling underneath like a big room sized lava lamp, except as Bob stepped on the surface that wasn't exactly there, a tress of pink smoke wafted up and seemed to curl around his ankle like a cat wanting attention. If there was glass there, how could it do that? But Bob couldn't walk on air ... could he? 

Oh fucking Christ. How far over his head was he here? 

"Don't worry, it's perfectly safe, it's just a place between dimensional planes." Bob assured him, turning around with his hands out, as if to prove it was safe. Where the hell had the heart of Agrona gone? He must have zapped it somewhere when he wasn't looking. 

"Which means what?" 

"It's in a transitional state between realities." 

Oh yeah, that was clear. He glanced down to see if he could spot anything beneath or beyond the smoke - like,say, ground ( it didn't smell like smoke-it smelled more like clouds) - but the smoke/clouds were all occluding, blocking out anything that might have been below it as it swirled in what may have been winds he couldn't feel, or simple Brownian motion - he really couldn't say. 

"I know,it's freaky, but once you're with Bob long enough, nothing's all that freaky anymore," Helga said, and he looked up, startled, as her voice was in the room. She was there, standing a couple of feet behind him and to the left, cleaned up, her outfit changed to one of snug but comfortably worn jeans and a purple t-shirt that clashed somewhat with her skin, and a red mark circling her eye and pulling back to the side, disappearing beneath her short green hair - it almost looked like the way ancient Egyptian women were often depicted wearing eye make up.  
"You got the war paint treatment too, I see," he noted. 

She grimaced in embarrassment. "Yeah, mark of Moros. I'm working under his aegis." 

"Moros? As in the word morose?" 

Bob chuckled. "You and your languages, mate. Once upon a time you must have been a linguist or a translator or something. Yes, exactly like morose - Moros was known to the Greeks as the god of doom." 

"Doom?" He didn't realize that had its own god. Well, at least he knew which one liked him so much. Logan looked warily down at the so called floor, and wondered if he should try it. 

"I know, brother of death, not a cheerful bloke. He has the power to wipe out any god he chooses, though-mega uber powerful." 

"So why doesn't he?" 

"Because he's too depressed to get out of bed." 

Logan stared at him, but Bob held his empty hands up in a warding off gesture. It was only then that Logan saw Bob had an eye painted in the center of his left palm. "Seriously - I'm not shitting you. He lives in a realm all his own, and it's like the smelly bachelor pad of the most depressive person you'd ever meet. He's so depressed he has almost no hygiene at all, never cleans up after himself, but rarely has reason to do so since he sleeps for years at a time. He's like a writer or something." 

"But he has all that power?" 

"Oh yeah. He just has no desire to use it. A neat little failsafe, actually. I mean, he's never going to get drunk on his own sense of power, is he?" 

He had a point there. "But you know him?" 

"Oh yeah. And he owes me one, 'cause I cheered him up once." 

"Really? How'd you manage that?" 

"Laughing gas." Logan just continued to stare at him. This was all one big joke, wasn't it? "Seriously, good old nitrous oxide. Had to amp it up a bit for god physiology, but it worked. Brought in a pizza and a copy of the movie Airplane!, and he had a good night. Possibly the only one he ever had." 

Logan sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I'm not sure I ever wanted to know all of this." 

"Well, who does? Now, you comin' in? Don't got all reality, mate." 

Still rubbing his eyes - so they were closed - he took a tentative step forward, ready to fall and braced for impact. But it was like stepping on wet foam - slightly squishy, but it held up just fine. He then looked down, and wasn't surprised to see a bit of fog caress his right calf. It felt like being brushed with a damp feather. "What is this stuff exactly?" 

"You know how people talk about the ether? And I don't mean the old fashioned knock out gas." 

"No." 

"Well, this is it. Say hi to it, it gets lonely." 

He looked up startled, only to find Bob giving him that Cheshire Cat grin again. Logan frowned, and snapped, "Just stop that, all right? This is creepy enough as it is." 

"But I gotta have a hobby," Bob mock protested, as Helga shook her head. 

Bob was the god of loonies, wasn't he? Crazy people needed a god too, right? 

Oh shit - maybe that's why he was his avatar. It made a certain kind of sense. 

Bob motioned him over to the right with the slightest wave of his painted hand, and he took up his position, only now aware that the door had not just shut itself, but melted into the wall - it wasn't there anymore. Had it ever been there? The thing - it must have been the "finder"- then appeared in the center of the room, right at Bob's feet: it looked like...what the hell did it look like? A jewel encrusted piece of slagged metal, not quite as big as his head but almost, and as he watched, it rose into the air in front of Bob, spinning around briefly before exploding soundlessly, becoming a hair fine spread of glittering particles suspended before him like a living net. Then it seemed to solidify into a map, an almost 3-D representation of something that could have been a digestive system put back together by a nearsighted and sadistic pre-med student, or an overhead shot of the entire Los Angeles freeway system - trails resolved into lines of bruise violet, hallways that twisted in on themselves like pretzels or something in an M.C. Escher painting; a nightmare of winding roads that led absolutely nowhere. A mostly translucent hologram of a Gordian knot made of headless serpents. 

Slowly tiny pinpricks of golden light began to fade in, first appearing inside one channel, then another, and then there were dozens of them; a rash of them, reproducing all the time. Bob snorted derisively and shook his head. Did his hair look more golden than usual? "Tricky little bint. Kumiho must have known I'd try something like this." 

"You can't find them?" All this trouble for absolutely nothing? Why did that figure? 

"No, but it doesn't matter; I know where to start looking for them." 

"Oh yeah? How?" 

"There was only one thing that coulda told them you were my avatar, mate-an Old One." Bob waved his hand through the air, and the map disappeared. 

"The giant squid things? Didn't you send them to Hell?" Logan asked. 

"I did, but Ares and Kumi are certainly strong enough to pop in and leave." 

"And scare the shit out of an Oldie?" Helga said. She sounded slightly dubious. 

Bob nodded enthusiastically. "You've never seen Ares have a snit. And he's always threatening people with that bloody sword of his." 

"He carries a sword?" Logan was really sorry he never was one for paying attention to myths. Was Ares depicted as carrying a sword? 

"Yeah, but mostly for show. He's a god with a small power complex, and he tries to make up for it by beating his chest and wavin' his big old sword around." 

"Very phallic," Helga noted. 

"Yeah. For beings with great distaste for physicality, some of them really do act like they're obsessed with the size of their theoretical willies." 

Logan grimaced, trying not to laugh. Did that mean Ares didn't have a dick? Oh man, what a downer for him-no wonder he was a testy son of a bitch. "But you don't think it's a problem?" 

"Oh no. He's a coward at heart. Most bullies are." 

He couldn't argue with that. "What was that thing we were looking at anyways?" 

"Oh, a dimensional map." 

Logan tried to imagine how that could be, but couldn't. "It was a bunch of stuff tangled together." 

"Yes. Well, dimensions aren't quite as separate as you think. You know what the "butterfly effect" is?" 

"Of course - a small change in a closed system can lead to unpredictable results; a blip on the quantum level can cause disruptions on the physical level. Or something like that." 

"Right. And the dimensions are so close to one another the same thing can happen between them, but on a much larger scale." 

"They look like intestines?" 

"No, but that's the best way to depict them. This is all theoretical, you know - there's no way to view all dimensions at once, not even as a cross section. So it does the best it can, giving us a representation our minds can handle." He glanced around, as if this topic was through, and said, "You guys ready?" 

"Ready for what?" Helga asked first. 

"To go to hell." 

"We're not there already?" Logan shot back. 

"Ha ha, funny man," Bob replied, and made a casual flourish with his hands. 

And that's when the bottom fell out of the world. 

7 

    It was a falling sensation unlike any other - a high speed plummet down a deep canyon, at a velocity so incredible they'd have died long before they hit the ground. But even as he could feel the outward force, he realized it was mostly internal, as if he was falling from the inside out. Precisely how many laws of physics were being broken right now? 

Still, Logan wasn't half as prepared for impact as he thought he would be. 

It was more like it hit him rather than he hit it - it seemed to come out of nowhere and smack him full on across the length of his entire body, reverberating through his metal skeleton like a cannon shot. When he could move and think, he realized the smell of this place was unbearable - blood and decay and shit and death and pain and fear unlike any other; it seemed to shoot straight up into his sinus cavities like needles, and he winced, eyes watering from the pain. His stomach seemed to lurch, and he wondered if he was finally going to find out if he could vomit or not. 

Logan shoved himself up, sitting back on his haunches, and only then did he realize where he was - the place of his nightmares. The cold laboratory of metal walls and dangling cables like eviscerated guts obscuring his view of the ceiling, shadows clinging to the wall like spilled ink, the dim lights frigid white and ichor green, highlighting sharp blades and machinery that rose from panels and looked like nothing so much as chains, shackles, and ... needles. Needles as big as his forearm, and as he glanced around, he saw he was surrounded by men in those white HazMat suits, all bearing needles half the size of his arm, and then he heard the high pitched electric whine of a bone saw, and his blood turned to ice. No - no, this was not happening again; they were not taking him without a fight. He'd shove those needles through the back of the skulls, and see how they liked being cut with a fucking saw - 

- except he couldn't move. He seemed stuck to the metal floor as if frozen there, and the more he tried to do something, the more paralyzed he became. He was starting to mentally panic, adrenaline dumping into his system as they closed the circle on him, the man with the electric saw the nearest, and Logan felt bile rising in his throat from fear alone, tasted metal in his mouth. This was not happening again, this was not happening - 

The men stopped, and Logan heard an incongruous noise - singing. Someone singing. "Raise your cup and let's propose a toast, to the thing that hurts you most." Suddenly hands slapped onto the shoulders of the men standing right in front of him, and they were shoved aside like curtains as a painted man walked past them. 

Bob. Yes, okay, now he was starting to remember ... 

"I guess I'm not surprised at your choice of hells," Bob said, offering him a hand up. Logan found he could move again, and he took his proffered hand, although he felt monumentally silly now - what had he been afraid of? "I'm just sorry it happened in real life." 

As soon as he was on his feet, Logan could see all the men were gone, and he felt better, although confused. "Choice of hells? What does that mean?" 

"It means that while there are some hell dimensions controlled by tyrants who shape the reality - such as Arakis's realm - most hell is what you make it. It's in here." He tapped a finger against his temple. "Hell is all in the mind." 

"And you couldn't have warned us?" 

"No. Thinking about protecting yourself against it makes it worse. There is no way to protect yourself against your own mind. In fact, it's like tensing up before a crash - it hurts you more than you'd ever realize. There can be no worse hell than one a person inadvertently devises for themselves." 

Logan was willing to believe that-in fact,it made a lot of sense. "But you're immune?" 

"Oh, heavens no - no pun intended. In fact, why don't I pull you into my hell? That way we're all on the same page." Before he could respond, the dark lab melted away, and he found himself in - 

- a waiting room? 

It was a common construct of blinding white walls and flat beige carpet, with hard plastic chairs in various unattractive shades of off chart pastels ( was there ever a pastel orange? ) lined up against either side wall, and a low coffee table between them, full of very old magazines splayed out across its top like a spread out hand of cards. But something caught his eye, and Logan looked down to see that  the magazines were not only old ( one had a Model T on its cover ), but supremely bizarre - Curling Times, anyone? Nuts 'n' Bolts; Coffee Can Collector; Zits! ( had to be a teen magazine ); Yodeler's Monthly; The Bowler's Almanac; Pope Life; Cock Ring Weekly; The Tom Cruise Dictionary; It Yurts! Annual; The Joy of Mime; Dryer Lint Hobbyist. Logan found himself looking them over with rapt fascination-he couldn't believe he now knew what the magazines in hell's waiting room were like. 

"Being a party to Bob's psyche is always bizarre," Helga said. She was sitting in a blue plastic chair, flipping through a magazine with the fascinating yet horrifying title of Dildo Fancy. She tossed it back on the table, and it landed on top of a Which Geoduck? magazine. He almost wanted to look at it, but he had a feeling he'd be deeply sorry if he did. She stood up and stretched, her tail straightening and reaching for the ceiling as well, and then said, "Can we get this over with now?" 

"Certainly honey," Bob agreed, with a sort of false docility. 

Logan had to tear himself away from the magazines ( Kama Sutra For Puppets? ) to follow Bob and Helga, as they went through a neighboring door into what must have been the hospital ( ? ) proper. A nurse behind the front station started to yell at them - "Get back here now! You have not finished your paperwork!" - and Logan did a double take as he saw it was a young Louise Fletcher, in her starched Nurse Rached get up from the movie "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest". He supposed, if hell did have a receptionist, that character was perfect for the job. 

But since neither of them paid no attention to her, he didn't either, and soon he found they were in a maze of whiter than white corridors - and that's all it was. There were no doors - even the one they'd just come through had disappeared - and it was so perfectly white it was impossible to say where the walls met the floor and ceiling. It was just like being snowblind, and twice as disorienting. To make things worse, his sense of smell was going haywire; he was smelling incongruous things that he couldn't see anywhere - iron and bread; blood and lilacs; mud and salt; sweat and dry ice. What the fuck was going on? 

And then he noticed the Muzak. 

Playing so faintly it was barely audible, it took a moment for him to recognize the canned tune was a pan flute heavy version of "The Girl From Ipanema". It was just slightly less painful than the whine of a bone saw, but not by much. "Your hell has muzak?" Logan asked. Only by following the brightly painted Bob and the very green Helga was he able to keep his sense of equilibrium in this aggressively white void. 

"Whose doesn't?" He replied, and Logan knew he had a good point. "Actually, I hope we can find an Oldie soon, as the next song up is "McArthur Park" on a Hammond organ." 

"Ouch. That's just evil." 

"Well, it's hell. What do you expect?" 

"How are we going to find the Oldies?" Helga wondered. "There's no doors." 

"I'll open one when I sense them. It's best things are all sealed up, trust me." 

Logan then remembered a salient point that no one had mentioned. "Hey, aren't we gonna be going nuts once we get close to them?" 

"Not so much. You're protected somewhat by me, and Hel's protected somewhat by Moros, but I wouldn't be surprised if you got a sense of them, and perhaps a headache. Just don't get too close." 

They seemed to walk an endless time in the great white nothing, and he would swear they'd gone in circles ... or maybe doubled back ... he didn't know. He usually had an unerring sense of direction, but right now he wasn't sure what up and down were. And that muzak was insidiously corrupting-it smelled like wet dog and vanilla frosting, irritation and tar, and it was starting to give him a headache. Wait a minute - since when did he get headaches? "Bob, we're close," he said, rubbing his temple. 

"Yeah, I'm starting to pick one up. Maybe you guys wanna start hangin' back." 

"Do we have a choice?" Helga asked, sounding slightly pained herself. 

"McArthur Park" on the Hammond organ did indeed start, and it was worse than he could have ever imagined: it was a cross between skating rink music and carnival calliope music, and it nearly stimulated a gag reflex. He and Helga slowed their pace and let Bob get ahead of them, and maybe it was something Bob did, but he could now see darker seams where the walls might have met the floor and ceiling. But the ache in his head deepened, and it felt like he had an angry wasp inside his skull, its angry buzzing resonating through his neurons and synapses, vibrating his eardrums. He was obscurely glad his senses were going haywire now - if he remembered correctly, the Old Ones didn't smell pleasant at all. 

A door appeared in front of Bob at the end (?) of the hall, and it slid open before he could walk into it. Beyond it, Logan caught a glimpse of sky as red as embers, and felt waves of dry heat emanating from the doorway like an oven. There was something black too, and a smell of burning rubber, but Logan figured it was the Old One. As if to confirm that, there was a high pitched, almost ultrasonic squeal that cut through his brain like a dental drill. 

"Oh, come on - you knew I'd be showing up," Bob replied, as if he had understood the damn thing. 

The humming in his head increased, a teeth rattling white noise, and while he knew Bob was talking to it, he could no longer to tell what he was saying - the language sounded alien somehow. But then Helga, who was covering her ears, said something to him, and he couldn't understand her either. Language was being taken away from him; understanding, comprehension ... why couldn't he think? Why was it so hard to think? 

But what was there to understand? The walls - the whiteness - started to melt away, and he saw everything around them, this entire universe as it spread out around them ... seas of boiling tar, deserts of endless light, lands of eternal snow ... there were no people here; no people, just things. There were demons and things he couldn't have named, things that may have once been gods, all languishing in private hells. 


	4. Part 4

And they could walk out. Maybe that was the worst thing - they could get up and walk out if only they knew these prisons were mostly self-imposed ... but the hell of it was they didn't know. That was hell - believing you were powerless,being powerless, and yet all the time freedom was right there ... right in front of his face. 

"Earth to Major Tom," Bob said, and suddenly everything contracted into a nothing point, and he found himself looking right into Bob's neon blue eyes. 

Logan suddenly lurched back, breaking contact with Bob, and was startled to find he was kneeling on the floor. Bob was crouched before him, Helga standing off to one side, watching them with barely concealed impatience. "What the fuck happened?" He asked, covering his personal embarrassment with anger. It always seemed safest. 

Bob stood, and told him, "Mate, what is it with you? You adapted to the power I gave you." 

He got to his feet, feeling strangely shaky, and wondered exactly what that meant. "Huh?" 

"You started using it unconsciously - you started seeing things like I can. But you had no idea how to control it, so you went a little ..." He seemed to struggle to find a kind way to put it. 

"Cataleptic," Helga interjected. "I mean, do you want some ranch dressing with that vegetable?" Man, she was the queen of tact, wasn't she? 

He scowled at her - like it would do any good - and then shot the look at Bob, even though it would have even less effect. "But you fixed it, right?" 

"Yes, you're apples. I can't imagine your mind could adapt to the energies now, so you should be okay. But if you suspect things are getting weirder for you than the rest of us, shout. Right?" 

He nodded, feeling a little stronger in himself, but still a little ashamed of what had happened. He tried to make sense of it, but he almost couldn't remember it now - had Bob been responsible for that? "Is that how ... I mean, you can see through the walls?" 

Bob grimaced, and Logan knew he didn't want to talk about it. "There really aren't any walls, mate. It's just easier that way." 

"Easier for who?" 

"Them and us. Mortals don't usually prowl the halls." 

"What halls?" 

"Now mate, don't be a smart ass. Besides, I got us a lead so we can get the hell out of Dodge." 

Logan wasn't ready to let this go. "You see it all, and it doesn't get to you?" 

"At my age, you learn how to filter it out. Ya have to if you wanna survive, just like you and your hypersenses. If you never learned how to filter the input, could you ever go near a public toilet ever again?" 

Okay, that was a good point. 

"Where did they go?" Helga asked, crossing her arms over her chest as her tail twitched impatiently. 

"The Ogdoad realm. Everyone hangin' on to their britches?" 

"Wait,"Logan said, but it was too late. Hell seemed to twist around them, and then it felt like they were literally spit out into a hard black nothingness. Although it was nice to be out of hell, was he ever going to get used to this? 

Reality coalesced around them like it was being slowly colored in; the sky was first, a swirl of dark red and purple like silt disturbed at the bottom of a riverbed,and then he could see they were standing on a jagged outcropping of blue-black rock, overlooking a desert of maroon sand. In the distance was a domed city, a clear bubble surrounding towers made of gold; it looked like jewels glittered in their spires, emeralds and rubies as big as a Human being. "Where the hell are we?" He asked, looking around frantically. He couldn't smell anything but parchment now - what did that mean? 

"Ogdoad," Bob said, brushing sand from his hands. "In Ancient Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad pantheon consisted of gods who made up their basic creation myth - Nun, Naunet, Huh, Hauhet, Kuk, Kauket, Amun, and Amaunet. Or, to be very literal, water, death, space, infinity, darkness, chaos, wind, and power." 

"You mean there's gods named Nun and Huh?" He was positive Bob was making this up. 

"Yeah. Again, we can't all have the cool names, Wolverine." He gave him a smart ass wink, then added, "Nun's really uptight about it, but Huh's cool." 

"Do you think Ares and Kumiho are getting some help here?" Helga asked, joining him in looking around. The way her tail continued to twitch, he knew she was uncomfortable. 

"I wouldn't put it past Kuk and Kauket, but Naunet hates Ares, so we can rule them out." 

"Any friends here?" Logan asked, turning towards an odd noise. It was just beyond the base of the cliff they were on, and he started down the incline cautiously. It was a small noise, a dry scrape, like sand against rock, but since there was no wind he assumed it meant something. 

"Yeah, Amaunet - I know her through Bastet." 

"The god with the cat head?" He knew that much. 

"You were married to her, weren't you?" Helga said. Logan looked back at Bob so fast he almost got whiplash. 

Bob shrugged with his hands and shook his head. " Not exactly; it's kinda complicated." 

It sounded like a bad sitcom - "I Married Bastet". "She gave you that knife, right?" 

"Yeah, it was a gift." 

Logan continued down the slight slope, shaking his head. Bob had goddesses among his ex-wives? And yet he hadn't been turned into a newt? Either they were very patient, or Bob managed to fake being a decent husband. Still, what did that mean when your were both all powerful and virtually omniscient? He didn't even want to imagine what a spat would be like - worlds probably crumbled. 

Logan reached the base of the crag, where the outcropping met the base of a shallowly sloped hill, and found the source of the noise. "Uh, Bob," he asked, never taking his eyes off the thing. "What does Amaunet look like?" 

"Well, as a goddess she can take any form she likes, but she seems to prefer the ones the Egyptians knew her by - a woman with the body of a snake. Why?" 

"I think she's here," he said, wondering if he should pop his claws. 

The thing reared up, hissing. It was the face of a beautiful Egyptian woman, who, from the neck down, was a serpent - a serpent with a scaled black body approximately sixty feet long and twenty feet wide, coiled in a loose circle beneath her. But as she raised her upper half far over him, maybe twenty feet, her body unfurled, her tail leaving a track as wide as a riverbed in the brick red sand. 

Logan suddenly wondered if all Bob's break ups had been amicable. 

8 

    "Amau, sweetheart, please don't attack the friends," Bob said jovially, coming up behind him. 

"You dare to bring a mortal here?" She spat. Her voice was half Human and half snake  
hiss. She was also speaking Egyptian Arabic, but he didn't realize that until after the fact. 

"He's no mere mortal - he's my avatar. He's pretty neat, once you get to know him. And oh, this Helga - she's working in Moros's stead. You got no problem with that, do ya?" 

Her large golden eyes, which had vertical black slits for pupils, seemed to looked down at Helga with a scrutiny that would have made Logan nervous. She looked exactly like a cobra eyeing a wounded bird. "Your consort?" 

"Hey!" Helga objected. "I'm no one's "consort"!" 

"She's my girlfriend and bodyguard," Bob clarified. 

Logan didn't know how Bob said "bodyguard" with a straight face. Like he needed one! 

Amaunet scrutinized them all, and then started to slowly lower herself down into a smaller coil. But then something really strange happened - the air seemed to distort, twist around her like it was in pain, and then she was no longer a giant snake but a tall and slightly androgynous Egyptian woman, dressed in black scales like leather, with a small clear gemstone in the center of her forehead, protruding like a third eye. She had no hair, only more black scales covering her scalp, and her lips were, for some reason, yellow, but her eyes remained gold with slit serpentine pupils. "Bringing mortals here - no matter their affiliations - is against the rules." 

"You know how I am about rules," Bob replied nonchalantly. 

Her ocher lips thinned, and Logan noticed her lips were covered with very tiny scales as well. "Be that as it may - do I assume your presence here has something to do with Ares and Kumiho passing through?" 

Bob threw up his hands. "Finally! So what did those buggers want?" 

Logan noticed something strange about the light; although dark red and making the shadows on the ground purple, it seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. Glancing up, he found the sun; it was crimson and flickering like a ball of fire. What kind of weird ass dimension was this? 

"Help. It seems they're afraid they're about to come under attack." 

"Oh really? By whom?" 

"You." 

"Those fucking liars," Helga snapped, as Bob just chuckled and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Do you know what they're trying to do?" 

Amaunet gave Helga a glance that could have withered a live plant. Obviously she didn't like mortals ( or was it consorts? ) talking to her. "Upset the balance? Yes, of course, I am not a mortal." 

It would take more than that to intimidate Helga. She glared back at her, an acrid look that could have burned meat from the bone, and said, "Look sweetcakes, they want to either sway him or kill him - you gonna help us or not?" 

Logan looked away and pretended to cough to cover a laugh. Only Helga would dare to call a pissy goddess "sweetcakes". 

"I wish them luck," Amaunet said, her voice as cold as ice. "Bob is an impossible beast." 

Of course Bob laughed at this, not in the least bit offended. He must have had a rhino thick hide, or he just didn't take gods seriously. Did he take anything seriously? "If someone doesn't stop them, you know the repercussions." 

Amaunet made a sour face, like she just smelled something bad, and glanced towards the domed, jeweled city. But she seemed to be looking through it, and Logan saw her pupils dilate slightly, swelling into an ellipse before shrinking to normal width. He wondered what kind of power she had, and if Bob would ever tell them the full story about it. After having had a glimpse of hell as it truly was, he'd come to the not so startling realization that Bob edited the truth, based on what he thought people could handle. It made him wonder what Bob had never told him about himself. "Fighting is such a lower plane activity," Amaunet sighed. 

"It happens to the best of us. You don't have to get directly involved, just give me a power push if I need it. Much appreciated." 

"Have you asked Camaxtli?" 

"Yeah, visited him earlier. Can't take them to his realm, you know." 

"Him? I thought it was a her," Logan interjected. "And why can't we go to his/her realm?" 

"Well, Cammy's back to bein' a he right now - he likes to switch off. And I can't take ya because ... well, temptin' him with blood on the hoof just ain't a wise idea." 

"There are vampire gods?" 

"Not as such. Cammy's not a vampire, just a war god. They can be like that, you know?" 

"Camaxtli's power springs from blood, mortal," Amaunet hissed at him derisively. He could see she had a black forked tongue. Kinky. 

Logan mulled that over for a moment, then began to ask, "Then how did Jean and the others act as - " 

"Not here," Bob interrupted. "I'll explain later." Bob quickly looked away, so he didn't hold his gaze for long, but Logan scowled at him anyways. Was there some sort of blood ritual involved in that whole "proxying for Camaxtli" thing? Just because none of the others remembered it didn't mean it didn't happen. But he couldn't see Bob hurting them, even if it was only just to prick their fingers (although he doubted a bloodthirsty god would be happy with such a piddling amount). Did that mean Bob offered his own blood up? Would he have put it past him? 

What an odd man. 

"I will aid if possible," Amaunet said grandly, like a Queen bestowing a favor on a subject by not having him beheaded in front of his kids. 

"Ta," Bob said, as if this was no big deal at all. "Know where they are now?" 

Amaunet cocked her head to the side, in such a way that he knew she couldn't have a normal spine. "Kumiho is very dangerous." 

"Yeah, I know. Did she get some help here?" 

Although Logan knew he was no good at reading the body language of snake women, he was relatively sure she was hesitating. "I believe Kuk may have rendered assistance." 

"Kuk," Bob repeated with a weary sigh. "Figures. Did he loan it, or did he go with them?" 

"Kuk is gone, but I'm not sure he left with them." 

Bob nodded, as if it made perfect sense that she didn't know; like gods were coming and going all the time around here. "Do you know where they went?" 

Now he knew she was hesitating. "I believe they have retreated to the Shadow realm." 

Bob grimaced and looked down at the bloody sand, nudging up a bit of it with his toe. "Oh dear." 

"Bad news, old man?" Helga asked. Her tail continued to twitch metronomically, in such a way that he knew she still wasn't happy with Amaunet. 

"Well, possibly. Are you ready to fight?" 

"I'm always ready," Logan replied. 

"Ditto," Helga agreed. See, that was why - annoying as she could be - she was so much more fun than your average person. 

"Good, because I think we're going to have to - if they're going to set a trap for us, it will be there." 

"And you're going in anyways?" Amaunet said, giving Bob an odd look. It was somewhere between admiring and disbelieving, as if she was glad she was never that much of lunatic, but she was cheered that someone else was. 

Bob shrugged helplessly. "Can't help but do so, Amau. The only other option is to wait and see if they come for us, but it'll probably be all over by then." 

"And we've been through too much shit to just wait around," Logan pointed out. He was tired of this rampant, serial weirdness, and just wanted to get this all over with. Especially if there was some danger he could adapt to Bob's energy again - he still wasn't sure what he had seen, but he was sure he didn't want to see it again. 

Amaunet gave him a deadly look, as if he had offended her simply by speaking in her presence, but since it was clear she didn't like mortals he didn't take it personally. She switched her death glare to Bob. "You do ask for trouble." 

"Not really. It just sort of finds me." 

She made a derisive noise and didn't so much shake her head as waggle it side to side. Not used to it? "You've been in the lower realms too long." 

"Probably. But hell, what can you do?" He then turned to them, and seemed to study them both before saying, "Really ready? I think we'll be hit the second we come in, knowing Ares." 

Logan exchanged a questioning glance with Helga, but they both saw the same thing - an urge to get this done, no matter what. "We're ready," he said, on behalf of both of them. Helga nodded an agreement. "What's the big deal on this Shadow realm anyways?" 

"It's a demon playground. And Ares surely can throw his weight around there like you wouldn't believe." Bob then closed his eyes and seemed to take a deep breath, clenching his hands into fists at his side. He looked like he was psyching himself up for something, and that wasn't good. "Thanks, Amau, be ready for my signal. Okay guys, hang on to your knickers - here we go." 

Once again the world seemed to warp around them, invert, and Logan just barely had a sense of hitting something before they attacked. 

9 

    He heard them before he even felt the first blow. It was a high pitched squealing, sort of like what he imagined a monkey being pureed in a rusty blender might sound like, and then he felt a sharp pain as claws ripped deep into his back and tore away muscle as well as flesh. 

As he cried out in pain, he saw shadows swarming towards him, obscuring his vision. No wonder it was called the Shadow realm. 

He popped his claws and slashed out at the all smothering darkness, hoping he wasn't on the edge of a cliff. He'd had no time to orient himself, and didn't have the vaguest idea of his surroundings, or even a hint as to where Helga and Bob were in relation to him - all he knew was he was under attack. 

The shadows seemed to enfold him, shadows with edges that cut into his skin from all angles - he could hear cloth ripping, felt his skin being torn away like he was being flayed alive, and it seemed like his claws were slicing through something with the consistency of cotton candy; something barely tangible. But their screeches spiraled up into the hypersonic range, and he assumed he was hurting them. 

He continued fighting even though he couldn't see, even though half his body was in savage pain from deep cuts, even though the cries of these creatures not only filled his ears but seemed to be threatening to crowd out all of his thoughts as well. He fought because it was pure reflex, and because he didn't know what else to do; it became a simple equation - them or him. 

Logan made headway, but he had no idea how. He stumbled free from a knot of darkness, his whole body feeling like it was on fire from all the healing currently going on, but he felt new cuts made on the back of his thighs, and a sharp, knife like pain seemed to punch through his left eye. 

He continued to lash out, because he had no idea what else he should do, but he dropped to his knees on what felt like hard packed earth, and hoped he hadn't just lost his eye. He didn't want to find out if that would grow back or not. 

He assumed the darkness would dissipate as he got free of these suckers, but it didn't - he still couldn't see a damn thing, and he felt a momentary spike of fear through his gut as he considered the possibility he was blind. But as his eyes adjusted to the Stygian darkness,he thought he saw movement, the overwhelming night writhing like snakes, and he smelled someone familiar, even over the sour metallic smell of demon blood. "Hel?" He asked. 

"What the fuck were those things?" She gasped, crawling up to him. If her breathlessness didn't gave away her condition, the smell of her blood did. 

"I don't know. You're the demon - you tell me." 

"Fuck you," she said, but without much enthusiasm. She crawled up to him and sat down, leaning against him, the back of her head resting in the crook between his neck and shoulder. The smell of her blood was strong, and it seemed to be taking her a moment to catch her breath. 

"You gonna be okay?" 

"Yeah, just got winded. What about you? You don't smell all that uninjured yourself." 

"I'm okay," he lied, still not sure if he had his left eye or not. But he wrapped his arms around her, claws still out, prepared to defend her as well as himself until she could recover. 

"Sure you are, hero," she replied, but so lightly he didn't take it as an insult. 

Maybe his eyes were adapting ( or eye - he wasn't sure he had stereo vision ), but he was pretty sure he could make a lighter darkness out in front of the greater darkness - it was that, like wisps of smoke, like dark wraiths - that was moving, twisting on unfelt winds, surging and falling back like the tide. There was either a single one of them, a huge amorphic blob surrounding them, or there were thousands of the things, millions, waiting to tear them to ribbons. 

And, if he was right, they weren't on hard ground, just like they weren't under a dark sky - they were on nothingness, in nothingness. Not so much a realm of shadows as a realm of complete void, yet paradoxically a void given form:there was no light, no nothing, just the darkness itself given savage aspect. 

"Can you see anything?" She asked. 

He shook his head, but he knew she could feel the movement. "Not really. Is there anything to see?" 

"Beats me." She then took a deep breath, and shouted, "Hey, old man, where are you?" 

This emptiness did something odd to their voices; he heard no echo but a queer flatness, like they were stuck in a dark room full of acoustic tiles. "They'd have hit him harder than us - he's the big gun here," he told her, although he had no idea why. It wasn't helpful. 

"I know," she said, and seemed to sag into him further, as if trying to take refuge underneath his skin. 

Suddenly there was a noise, and the not-sky over their heads seemed to split open, like fabric being torn. Bright light stabbed through it, making Logan wince and close his eyes, as they heard a high pitched, distressed squeal all around them, and the flutter of a thousand different wings. When Logan could open his eyes again, he saw Bob not too far away, standing just below the rip in the sky. "That's a little better, isn't it?" Since he was wearing so much body paint, it was hard to tell he was a bit bloody too. 

Helga sighed in relief, but Logan, although secretly relieved, wasn't about to show it. "Are you sure this isn't hell?" 

"Yeah, but it could be considered a private hell dimension." 

And that's when they all felt the ground shake. 

It wasn't so much an earthquake as a tremendous thud, and they all looked towards the noise to see ... a leg? 

A leg. A thirty foot high leg. Followed by another. 

"Holy shit," Helga gasped, as they both looked up to see one pissed off looking god towering over them. He could use the Eiffel Tower as a toothpick. And on a sash around his waist, he was wearing a sword that looked as long as the Washington Monument. 

"Did you know Ares was this big?" Logan asked her, looking up at the literal mountain of a man. He could squash them like bugs, and he had a feeling a god could squish adamantium if he really wanted to. 

She shook her head, bloody and injured tail wrapping protectively around his wrist. If they were going to get squashed, they were going to get squashed together. "No, no fucking clue." 

"Oh please," Bob said impatiently, and then said something in a language Logan couldn't identify, which struck him as instantly wrong - since when was the last time he heard a language that he didn't know? 

But things got even weirder, as Ares suddenly ... well, shrunk. 

They didn't see it happening - one minute he was looming over them like some Old Testament god, and then next he was standing in front of them, about Human size and looking perfectly baffled at his change of altitude. 

Up close he was nothing much: a barrel chested guy with a thick weightlifter's neck,  
a bland moon face that seemed soft and only half-formed, dark eyes like piss holes in snow, and a thick mop of copper red hair in a loose and long style that suggested his last trip to the Earth realm - if ever - occurred at some point in the 1970's. If only he had some facial hair and obvious tats on his thick, bare arms, he could have been one of the rednecks he used to see on the bare knuckle boxing circuit. He was wearing gold armor that made him look like a chocolate bar wrapper, and basically could have been on his way to a gay toga party. What was threatening at seventy feet in height was silly at six feet. 

Ares himself looked down, almost more disappointed than startled. "Hey, no fair!" He whined, glaring at Bob. 

Bob just scoffed and shook his head. "If you're not fighting fair, neither am I." 

As Bob started walking towards him, Ares drew his sword, and held it towards him threateningly, as if it might shoot lightning bolts at him or something. It didn't, and Bob hardly seemed phased. "Is this the best you can do, Bob? Come to a fight with a few magic tricks, a proxy demon, and a ..." his dark, iris free eyes settled on Logan, and seemed to stare at him and through him at the same time. It was unsettling, but really he was just pissing him off more. "What the hell is that? Why can't I read it?" 

Logan wondered what Bob had done to him to keep Ares from reading him. "Wanna look in my mind, asshole? Go ahead." He wondered if remembering being flayed alive would freak out a god as much as a telepath. 

But Ares just sneered at him, and aimed the gleaming silver sword in his direction. "You have the taint of Bob on you, creature. Are you his proxy?" 

"Why would he proxy for me if I'm here?" Bob asked. "Where's Kumi hidin', Airs? Leave you on your lonesome, has she?" 

Ares ignored him and advanced on him and Helga, sword first. "You dare to bring mortals into this? Idiot - you've been among them too long - " 

Logan eased Helga out of his arms and stood up, mostly healed, or at least so much so it didn't make a difference. "Bring it on, fun boy. I ain't your average mortal." 

Ares stopped and glared at him in horrified fascination. "Are you actually challenging me?" 

Helga chuckled. "I really don't know who to feel sorry for here." 

Logan ignored her, and glared straight back at Ares. Did he think eyes that were all black would unnerve him? Hey, Srina's eyes went all black when she went invisible - obviously Ares didn't know any mutants. "Yeah, I am. If Bob can kick your ass, so can I." 

Ooh, that did it. Ares pasty complexion turned as orange as a carrot ( orange? ), and his lips twitched as if they were having a seizure on his fat face. "No mortal speaks to me that way!" Then with a mighty roar, Ares charged him, swinging his blade so fast, and with such dexterity, that it was a blur. 

So Logan just held his ground, and when he was certain Ares was in range, he held out a claw. The clang was tremendous, and the hit seemed to vibrate down his entire skeleton, but he had bet Bob's power on top of his adamantium would be enough to beat Ares and the power in his sword. 

He was right. 

The top half of the sword neatly flew away, and Ares looked at the stub, dumbstruck. "What the hell..?" But then he threw the stub aside angrily, and shouted, "This is your fault, Bob!" He then made a dismissive hand gesture at Logan, and it felt like a lightning bolt hit him straight in the brain, bypassing his skull and heading straight for the prefrontal cortex. The pain was so great he didn't even feel it - his vision just whited out for a second. When he came to, he was laying on the ground, his head cradled in Helga's lap, and the pain thrumming through his nerves like an electric current, but fading rapidly. Helga looked down at him, and said, "You know you get brownie points for symbolically emasculating him." 

"Thank you." He must not have been out for more than a second, though, as Ares was still taking long, angry strides towards the impassively waiting Bob. 

"You bastard exile! Can't you use your tiny excuse for a brain for once and see the bigger picture?" Aries roared, clenching his large hands into meaty fists. 

"The bigger picture?" Bob replied casually. "The one where you run stuff as Kumiho's lapdog?" 

"I am no one's lapdog!" 

Logan now realized he had stereo vision. He was a little blurry on the left side, but blurry was better than blind any day. And Helga hadn't reacted in horror upon seeing his face, so he figured he was better off than he thought. 

"Yes you are, you stupid shit. The moment Kumiho wants you out you're gone - and you know what Eris is going to do to you when she finds you." 

That made Ares freeze in his tracks. Family in-fighting? "Eris?" 

"You and I both know myths and your personal hype is bullshit - she was always the powerhouse in the family, and holy shit, mate, is she pissed at you." 

Ares now tried to bluff and posture, proving macho behavior wasn't limited to the Earth realm. "I can handle her," he lied, crossing his thick arms over his chest. 

Bob snorted derisively. "Uh huh. Mate, you were never hiding from me - you're hidin' from her." 

"I am not!" 

"Pull the other one! You're shit scared of her, and you fuckin' should be! How the hell were you and Kumi gonna deal with her?" 

Ares's shoulders rounded in defeat, as if he was suddenly holding up a great burden. "Kumiho had a plan." 

"Which was what?" 

Ares titled his head up, setting his square jaw, the universal look of stubbornness. "Wouldn't you like to know?" 

But Bob studied him for a moment, then burst out laughing. Whatever defenses Ares had, they seemed to drop immediately. "What?" 

"You don't know, do you? She never told you." 

"She did so!" 

This was pathetic. Who knew gods could be so petty and immature? 

Bob shook his head and made a "go away you're bothering me kid" gesture with his hands. "You're a victim here too, ain't you Airs? She fucked with your head." 

"Ares is no one's victim!" He roared, just like an angry bear. But talk about a case of someone protesting too damn much; his automatic defensiveness spoke volumes that his shouting couldn't match. 

Bob threw his hands up in surrender, and looked as disappointed as the rest of them felt. "Do you have any idea where she went, or did she take that from your mind?" 

"I am not - " 

"Do you want to get some of your own back?" Bob interrupted. 

Ares paused and looked confused, which only reflected the general feeling of him and Helga at the moment. "Huh?" 

"Somebody's got to stop her. Wanna join us? You could get a boot in before we finish her off." 

Ares continued to look confused, and Logan could almost hear the rusty wheels in his head turning. Not a big thinker, was he?  "I, uh - " 

"I can keep her out of your head. She's good, but even she's not sneaky enough to get around me." 

Ares looked as hopelessly lost as an oversized tot, and he wouldn't have been surprised if he burst into tears. "I - I don't know ... " 

"Wanna kick her ass? Last chance, mate." 

"Hey," Helga snapped. "I thought he was the bad guy!" 

Bob shrugged. "Shit happens, hon. You know that." 

Ares gestured helplessly behind him. "Your creature broke my sword." 

"I am not a creature!" Logan sniped. Asshole. 

Bob rolled his eyes, but Logan wasn't sure if that was aimed at him, Ares, or both. "I'll get you a new one, okay? But seriously, don't threaten Logan with metal - you're just wasting your time and his." 

Ares continued to look lost at sea. "He is some kind of robot?" 

"All right, that's it," Logan snapped, getting to his feet. He felt much better now; the effects of the electric enema seemed to have died down. 

"Here we go again," Helga sighed. 

Bob held up a hand to him, and Logan froze in his tracks. "Damn it, Bob, let me go," he growled. 

But of course that was pointless. "You know my avatar couldn't be mechanical. And seriously, mate, stop pissing him off." 

Ares snorted derisively. "Avatar or not, he's still a mortal." 

"He still had a point. If I can kick your ass, so can he. And in spite of all the tricks in your helmet, my money's still on him. My avatar's as insane as I am." 

Logan didn't know if that was a compliment or an insult. 

Ares gazed at him warily, mouth twisting in distaste, and while he couldn't move, Logan could still throw a death glare his way. He didn't look impressed, but still he looked away first. "You can't trust these creatures. They're inconstant and easily manipulated." 

"Unlike gods?" Bob shot back. Ouch, that had to smart. 

Ares briefly flushed orange again - yep, that hurt - but before his anger could truly balloon out of control, he seemed to get a handle on it, and his whole body sagged in defeat. "I do not know how she tricked me." 

"Of course not; she wouldn't leave you that kind of info. But you can find her, can't you Airs?" 

He looked up, surprised, and shook his head, a petulant look on his face. He was exactly like a giant, overgrown infant, wasn't he? Emotionally if nothing else. War gods were children? Why did that make a sick sort of sense? Little boys and girls in the backyard, playing war, only the figures they used weren't toy soldiers. 

Bob released him, but now it didn't seem to matter. Logan had a thing about attacking the deficient, and Bob must have known that too. He simply turned back in disgust, returning to Helga. He held a hand down, and she grabbed it, using him to pull herself up. She looked like she had healed as well, but it still seemed like she had an extra kink to her tail. 

"I don't know - " Ares said helplessly. He really didn't know, did he? 


	5. Part 5

"Yes you do. I'd help you, but I don't want her to catch my energy in your head," Bob told him. 

Ares gave him a funny look. "You have a plan?" 

"Don't I always?" 

Ares looked puzzled, but Logan imagined that was his usual state. "She's prepared for an attack." 

"And I'm prepared for that, so let's get to it, Airs." 

Logan and Helga were left to standing aside while Bob quizzed the reluctant and slightly clueless Ares, and he found himself wondering if this could get any weirder. 

What was he thinking? Of course it could - he was with Bob, right? Weirdness followed him like a bad reputation. And they were with him, lose or win, until the very end. 

Logan tried not to dwell on the fact that this made them weird too. 

10 

    The first thing she felt was his hands moving up her body, followed by his lips brushing her abdomen, his stubble scraping gently against her skin. It felt so good Jean was reluctant to move, but she did, running her hands through his hair and gently guiding him up towards her. "Scott," she sighed, as he kissed her throat, gently running his teeth over her flesh as he tasted her skin. 

But she knew, even before he was over her, looking down into her face, that it wasn't Scott - the stubble had been sort of a giveaway, hadn't it? That and the fact that his body on top of hers was heavier,harder somehow. The funny thing was she didn't really care. She knew she should, but as Logan kissed her she forgot all about it. And Logan tasted so clean; even his sweat didn't taste salty. If she thought about it clinically, it made sense - toxins were filtered out of his body long before, if in fact they made it that far - his immune system effectively obliterated even the toxic byproducts of his own system. It was endlessly fascinating - if the exact genetic components of Logan's immune system could be isolated, it was quite possible that not only could people with immune disorders be cured with targeted gene therapy, but many illnesses could be completely wiped off the map - but right now she didn't care about the physiological implications of Logan's mutation. 

She ran her hand down his back, felt his muscles ripple beneath his unusually soft skin, and she knew she had to watch it. If she got too carried away, let her defenses down, her telepathy instantly kicked in with this level of physical closeness and intimacy ... 

... but it was too late. 

At first it was okay - no, it was great. On the surface, Logan's overwhelming desire for her filled her own mind, intertwined with her inexplicable lust, and they became a single entity. Her touch became his, and his taste became hers, his skin was her skin, and they were indistinguishable in the sensations thrilling through their bodies. For one second, it was the best thing about telepathy. All their feelings were doubled, magnified, and she couldn't imagine what intimacy was like for people without telepathy - they missed out on so much pleasure. 

But Logan's own mental defenses were down, and inadvertently, as entwined with his mind as she was, she went too deep. 

Suddenly she was assailed by pain, by a sensation of being trapped under ice and having her skin peeled back like a wrapper, knives digging deep into muscle and scraping bone - 

Jean woke up with a shout, immediately bringing her hands to her face, as if she could wipe away the horror. But of course horror and pain wasn't that easy to wash away, and certainly not when it was that brutal and intense. She was glad that Scott was already up and out, so she wasn't in the position of having to explain her nightmare. 

She needed to do two things: she needed to get Logan out of her system, and she needed to build a mental block around whatever memories of his she had inadvertently acquired. 

She thought it would fade, but even after taking a shower and getting dressed she was still shaking, and she wasn't sure if it was completely due to the nightmare or not. It wasn't all a nightmare - it had started off disturbingly pleasant. 

She had been allowed to sleep in far too late - it was almost noon of a punishingly sunny and warm day, and she could feel a burgeoning headache deep behind her eyes. She hoped some caffeine would cure that. 

On her way to the kitchen, she encountered Scott in the hall, coming out of the elevator. "Hey Jean," he said, giving her a small smile. 

She hugged him, and although he initially stiffened in surprised, he melted into it, hugging her back. "Are you all right?" He asked curiously. 

"I am now." He was still her oasis of peace and calm; his mind harbored no memories that would make you wake up screaming. And whatever the Organization had done to him, Bob - for better or worse - had fixed it, so he could cope without lingering trauma. 

He seemed to understand she needed the peace right now, and simply held her until she felt like she got her mental bearings back. "So what are you up to?" She asked, stepping back from him. 

"I agreed to give Antonio driving lessons today," he admitted, with the slightest grimace. 

"Oh dear." He had had his learner's permit for three days before he totaled a car, and very nearly himself. He admitted he was "probably" a little "reckless" - which was like saying Logan was often a tad aggressive. 

"I'll bring a dart gun, just in case." 

"Please do." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Be careful." 

"Always am," he replied, giving her a brilliant smile. She watched him disappear down the hall, and wished she could roll with the punches that easily. But when you were a telepath, and learned so much that you sometimes would rather you didn't know, it made things that much more difficult. 

She had only been in the kitchen a minute, inhaling coffee fumes and hoping it would wake her up, when Rogue came in, looking strangely perturbed. "Is something wrong?" She asked, mentally bracing herself. Oh, how she longed for a day when something wasn't wrong. 

"There's this weird British chick at the door," Rogue replied, gesturing behind her at the front room beyond the kitchen. "She says she knows Logan." 

"Really?" While it was intriguing, it also put her instantly on her guard - no offense to Logan, but did he have many friends? No wonder Rogue was leery. 

She followed her out into the main room, abandoning her coffee, and since she didn't recognize the magenta haired Indian woman talking to Brendan, she assumed that was the "chick" in question. 

" - any pictures of him shirtless?" Brendan was asking her. He had become more at ease with his half-demon status as time went on, although he hadn't told anyone about it at the school; if asked, he simply said he was a mutant. They needed to work on that. "I won't keep it, I just need to see it. I have an eidetic memory." 

The woman, who had painted her lips purple to match her hair and eyes, frowned slightly. "Which means what, ducks?" 

"I remember everything perfectly." 

"Oh. That must suck for you." 

He shrugged. "It has its moments. But there are some positives, like seeing Logan once in a tank top." 

She smiled knowingly, and gave him a wink. "Lovely sight, inn't it?" 

"Ah, my god, lust overload. But I only got the glimpse of him once, and I need more. Have you seen the guns on that guy? God ... " 

"His arms aren't the only guns he's packing," she told him, with a lascivious wink. 

Brendan stared at her, jaw gaping in shock, red eyes as big as saucers. "Oh. My. God." 

Rogue went up to him and gently grabbed his arm, giving the woman a look that was equally dubious and curious. "Come on, Bren. I think we've learned enough for today." 

He didn't move, so Rogue had to pull him along to get him going. "I think I'm in love," Brendan said, as Rogue dragged him out of the room. Well, Jean had to look at it this way - at least Brendan had found a reason to stay on. 

"Hello, can I help you?" Jean asked, instantly resenting the professional chill to her voice. But she couldn't help   
but be instantly suspicious of anyone claiming to know him. It wasn't like he mentioned her ... but to be fair, he didn't mention anyone unless he absolutely had to. 

The woman took no obvious offense at it. "Sure. I'm lookin' for Logan, he told me he crashes here sometimes. Is he about?" 

"No, I'm afraid he's not." She took a gamble on politeness and held out her hand. "We haven't been introduced - I'm Jean Grey." 

The woman shook her hand easily; she had a firm grip, but not crushing. "I'm Srina Adar, also known as Nightshade. Do you have some freaky mutant nickname?" 

"No, I've never really decided on that." Also, she was a Doctor, and who wanted to be treated by a Doctor with a nickname like "Firebird" or whatever? Not that she was a snob. "Nightshade? I hope that doesn't mean you're poisonous." 

"Oh no, it's kind of a pun - can't see shade at night." 

Jean looked at her curiously, not quite following her ( how could there be shade at night? ), and that's when the woman disappeared. She glanced around, startled, but the woman hadn't appeared anywhere else in the room. Then she heard, behind her right shoulder, "Boo." She whirled around, startled, and found Srina standing there with a big smile on her face. "Sorry, I like to show off when I can." 

Jean smiled politely, and tried to show that she wasn't at all rattled by her little display of powers. "Invisibility - that's quite impressive. You move quietly too." 

"Well, I had ta learn, or it would have blown the edge bein' unseen gets me, ya know? So what's your deal?" 

"I'm telekinetic, and I have some telepathic abilities." 

"Ooh, nifty. I bet that comes in handy on dates." 

She knew the woman was just trying to be nice, but there seemed to be something abrasive and perhaps the slightest bit disingenuous about her. "Er, yes. How do you know Logan?" 

"Oh, we go back - I met him in London. He's the only one I've met who renders my ability kind of pointless." 

"He can hear you?" 

"Yeah, and smell me. Also, I think he feels me, but that's just a guess." 

"Feels you?" She almost didn't want to know. 

"You know - he knows when people are lookin' at him, and he seems to know when people are around him, whether he can sense 'em any other way. A sixth sense." She then let out a humorous snort. "Like he needs another one on top of the other five, right?" 

Logan did seem to know when he was being watched, but she ascribed them to his other sense simply being so acute he picked up on subtle cues the rest of them missed. It was equally possible Srina had a point. "Indeed. I'll tell him you were here when he gets back." She didn't want to seem like she was rudely hustling her out, but to borrow a British phrase, it would have been so lovely if she wasn't here. 

Srina didn't seem to notice. She was looking around the front room with greatest interest, as if she was an appraiser. "Whoa - are those antiques real?" 

"Do you think they would be in a boarding school?" 

Srina scoffed appreciatively. "True. But that's a real Limoges vase on the mantel there- I'd recognize that anywhere." 

"Oh really. Are you in antiques?" Even as she said it, she knew that was highly unlikely. Her wardrobe was very blue collar and Logan-esque - tight jeans, worn nearly to chamois; heavy, scuffed Doc Martens boots; a very thin, old black t-shirt with the album cover of the first Sex Pistols release -Never Mind The Bollocks - emblazoned across her chest; and a long green leather coat that seemed very unseasonable. She had a black leather backpack slung over her left shoulder, and from the way it hung, Jean judged it to be relatively heavy. 

"In a manner of speaking, yeah," she said, giving her a smile that said Srina thought it was a joke. Jean didn't see how it could be, but what the hell did she know about this woman? Logan wasn't even here to confirm he knew her. "Where is the hairy hunka burnin' love? I figured he'd be comin' back here." 

Yet again, another puzzling statement. "Coming back here from where, London?" 

"Yeah. You didn't know he was there?" 

"He was there quite a while ago." 

"Yeah, but I mean yesterday." 

"He was there yesterday?" 

"What I said." 

Jean pondered that a moment, not sure he should trust her. She could try and read her to see what she was really after, but she was afraid of what she might see in her mind. "Logan left three days ago - he hasn't been back since." She didn't add that he left with Bob on some mysterious errand, because that was too much information. 

"Really?" She raised a single magenta eyebrow, and frowned in thought. She actually had a lovely face, unadorned with make up save for her lipstick, her skin a beautiful bronze that no amount of tanning would ever get you. And while she would have said she was young - late twenties, perhaps? - something about the way fine lines suddenly appeared at the corners of her plum colored eyes suggested she was older than she appeared. "Leave with a bloke named Bob?" 

Now it was Jean's turn to raise her eyebrow. "You know Bob?" That almost figured. 

"No, but he mentioned him. Weird guy with a ton of money." 

Jean couldn't help but nod, even though weird really just scratched the surface. "Why was Logan in London?" 

"Oh, Bob needed something, and Logan asked me to help him get it." 

This sounded unbelievably suspicious. "What did he need?" 

It was Srina's turn to study her, and it was clear she was considering whether to tell her some truth, a little, or none. Jean wasn't sure what she had ultimately decided. "Some ugly rock. Please don't ask me why, 'cause Logan never said. But I figured this Bob was some eccentric rich guy - ain't they all? - and 'ey, you do for a friend, right?" 

"Right." Certainly Bob wanting an ugly rock was not outside the realm of possibility; but it was more likely the rock was some demonic object, and Logan had left out the explanation of its true nature for a good reason. 

Srina shifted her heavy backpack to her opposite shoulder with a sigh, and said, "Look, do us a favor - if Logan shows up, tell him I've gone to Molokai on vacation for the next ten days. He's welcome to join me, but only if he brings a Speedo." She gave Jean a wink - she winked a lot, didn't she? - and then headed for the door. "Real posh place you guys got here, Jean." She turned in the doorway and glanced back at her with a silky and knowing smile. "And you might want to upgrade your security system. It's good, but you never know when you might have to protect yourself against unscrupulous mutants. Ta." 

Jean watched Srina walk out into the blinding sunlight, and wondered if that had been a threat. If so, it was rather mild, and since she gathered Srina - in spite of her lovely name - had a somewhat coarse personality, she didn't think she would ever bother to make a threat that oblique. No, that must have been her idea of helpful warning ... but why had she even noticed the security system? And how exactly? 

She suddenly wondered if Logan's choice of "friends" remained lodged in the social strata of misfits, where he had previously seemed to exile himself. And being a misfit among outsiders like mutants was quite a dubious talent indeed. 

She really was going to check the security system now. 

11 

    According to Bob, this dimension was Al Araf, known to Muslims as a sort of limbo, wedged firmly between paradise and hell. But, as it always seemed to be, the names had different meanings among the higher planes. 

Al Araf looked so much like an Earth realm Logan almost didn't believe it wasn't, even when Bob told him so. Of course it didn't smell right - it smelled a lot of sea salt and citrus, and odd combination if there ever was one - and while it looked like this was a bustling seaport, nothing looked remotely Human. Oh, and the sea was gold, like liquid sunshine, but really that wasn't nearly as weird as Logan thought it might have been. 

Bob was confident his powers could work "flavorless" here - whatever that meant - so while they looked like themselves to themselves, to the beasties strolling the white sand streets around them, they looked just like the majority of them - blue skinned quadrupeds, loping around with a strange kind of grace, with long necks that ended in triangular shaped heads with spiral horns, and three eyes set in the front of their faces, mimicking a pyramid shape. They spoke a language that sounded a lot like bird calls, and they seemed to have some sort of social structure - there was even something that looked like a marketplace. But according to Bob, no matter how they looked, these were all "Gods of a sort". He didn't bother to clarify "of a sort", and while Logan was dying to ask him, he really didn't think it was in his best interest to know. And would Bob really tell him the truth? 

Ares didn't cloak himself in any fashion; he walked around out there in his traditional bipedal form, armor glinting in the pale white sunlight, new sword on his hip, and he looked absolutely hysterical. With the little golden laurel leaf tiara he had added, he could have almost been an extra from "The Life of Brian". He looked like the pompous blowhard he was. Some god. No wonder his sister could kick his ass. 

The three of them stood in the shadow of a sandstone building - seemingly crude in design but really exhibiting a remarkable level of sophistication if you considered the fact that it was constructed by four legged beings with really long toes on the ends of their paws ( ? ) - and watched Ares strut uncomfortably among the crowd, like an extra from The Time Machine set accidentally stumbling into a remake of the "lollipop guild" scene from The Wizard of Oz. 

"Can I please laugh now?" Logan wondered, futilely clearing his throat once more. The more he was trying not to laugh, the harder it was. 

"Ares acts like an ass - it's his raison d'être," Bob explained, not for the first time. But finally he sighed, and said, "Okay, get it over with." 

He and Helga collapsed against each other in hopeless laughter, holding on to each other's arms to keep from falling over. This was just too goddamn funny. Bob simply sighed, like a father fed up with his kids, but otherwise refrained from comment. He looked away to snicker, wanting no part of their loud and undignified guffawing. 

Ares glanced over at them, scowling in confusion, and that only made them laugh harder. He really had to stop, or they'd be incapacitated. 

"Come on, we gotta calm down," Bob said, and it was probably an order, because somehow they did. Logan wiped the tears from his eyes, and couldn't remember the last time he last time he laughed so hard. He needed more comic relief in his life. 

"I still don't get how this is gonna work," Helga said, rubbing her eyes. 

"Well, the baddies should get a sense of Ares, and should wonder why the hell he's here. It'll flush them out, and hopefully his energy will be enough to cloak me from their notice." 

"Hopefully?" Logan repeated, not at all caring for the tentative nature of that word. 

"Well, I'm just sayin' - " Bob began, but then glanced up towards the pale blue - white sky, as if expecting a dive bomber to appear out of nowhere. Both he and Helga glanced up, but there was nothing to see. 

"What?" He asked. It was just then that Logan noticed Ares had paused and glanced upwards as well. 

"Here we go," Bob said, just as Ares winked out of existence. 

"Hey, he's done a runner on us," Helga said, grabbing Logan's arm. "Or did he?" 

They looked to Bob, and he shook his head. "Kuk just grabbed him." 

"Can we find him?" Logan wondered. Could their fragile plan have fallen apart right here? 

"Oh yeah - Kuk leaves a bright trail." 

Logan wondered if he was being literal or figurative, but it didn't matter as long as he could find him. Bob then grabbed his arm, and Helga wrapped her tail around his other arm, so they were all connected. He simply glanced at them questioningly, making sure they were ready, and after they nodded, Bob nodded back. Then reality twisted around them, and the light disappeared. 

When things reformed around them again, it was a darker and cooler place, limestone walls around them and curving low over their heads - Logan was sure he could reach up and touch the ceiling. It smelled like wet sand and dried flax in here, which was weird enough, but the light also wavered like it was being reflected off water. Bob motioned them to be quiet, then crept carefully out of this tiny cover, into the larger cave. He and Helga followed just as cautiously, and Logan could hear the distant echo of voices somewhere ahead in this maze of caverns. " - left me to Eris," Ares was shouting at someone. "She was never coming back, was she?!" 

"Now Ares, it isn't like that," a man with a smarmy voice replied. Even from here, Logan knew he was lying. "I'm sure Kumiho is on her way back - she's trying to recruit more help - " 

"She's trying to get me killed!" Ares interrupted angrily. He wasn't faking the indignance; when Bob helped him figure out that Kumiho and Kuk had probably left him behind as a sacrificial lamb to his sister, he was really pissed off. Logan figured, what with the omniscient thing, no god could be quite so stupid, but Bob pointed out that some were more omniscient than others. And since when did stupidity know any bounds? 

He was glad Bob was around to put things in perspective. 

"She would never do that!" The man ( Kuk? ) lied. "How can you think such a thing?" Then there was a dramatic pause, and then he said, quietly, suspiciously, "Who told you this?" 

"Who told me?!" Ares roared. When he got in a high dudgeon, he just couldn't get out of it. Talk about a method actor. "Are you implying that I'm stupid?!" 

"Of course not!" 

The beaten down white sand path ended at the mouth of an opening that seemed suspended in mid air, but looking down, you could see a wide open cavern below; for whatever reason, the level below them was the nexus point of a honeycomb of pathways and openings cut into the rock. In the center was a large ring of black fire - flames like living shadows from the Shadow realm, licking up into the air and collapsing back in on itself - and carved into the side walls were grotesques that looked like unholy crosses between gargoyles, tiki figurines, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. 

There were two bipeds down there as well - Ares of course, and a slightly bigger, thicker guy who - while Human looking from the neck down - looked like, from the neck up, a rather large green frog. 

"Now there's a fashion risk," Helga muttered. 

"And I thought Toad was bad enough," Logan muttered back. 

"You are - you're saying I'm stupid!" Ares had turned orange again, his fat face lighting up like a lamp, and if he'd been a regular old Human, Logan would have judged him to be two seconds away from a heart attack. 

Frog boy seemed to realize Ares was getting a little too hot under the armor, and lowered his voice ( how did he talk? ) to a more placating tone. "Ares, come on? How long have we known each other?" 

Even though they were only thirty feet below them, tops, it still sounded like they were right in front of them. Weird what tricks all this dimensional shit played on your hearing. 

Ares looked painfully puzzled. "I don't know." 

Frog boy put an arm around Ares's broad shoulders, and Logan saw his fingers were webbed together; he looked more like he had frog feet than traditional hands. "Look, my man, this is a tense and stressful time for all of us. But it will be over soon, you'll see." 

"Over for me, you mean." Ares said sourly. 

It sounded like Kuk was laughing, but really it was more like an exotic frog burping out a staccato noise - uk uk uk. Maybe that's how he ended up with the ugly monosyllabic name Kuk; it was a noise he made a lot. "No, of course not. You are the man - the big uber alles war god supreme!" 

"He's from Hollywood, isn't he?" Logan asked Bob. 

Bob just shrugged. "Sounds like it, doesn't it?" 

"Which of us is fit to stand in your titanic shadow? No one - you are Ares. Countries used to quake at the mention of your name!" 

"Suddenly I feel very, very dirty," Helga said. 

"We're all gonna need a shower after this," Logan agreed. This was such an egregious case of brown nosing he couldn't believe Ares was buying this for even a split second, but it looked like he was. His chest actually looked like it was inflating under his breastplate. 

According to Bob, Kuk's big power was "power over primordial darkness" - translated, it meant he could turn out the lights. But also he could make darkness a "physical thing" - not quite like the Shadow realm, but close. He also had power over chaos, but no control - he could "unleash chaos", but he had no ability to command it in any way ( "If it could be controlled, it wouldn't be chaos," Bob sagely pointed out ), so usually he was "in the next county" when he unleashed it, so he wouldn't get caught up in it. Bob didn't think he'd let his chaos power fly if they could keep him here, simply because he could get hurt by it himself. And Bob had appointed him the task of "pinning" Kuk to this dimension - according to him, Kuk's mortal weakness was "metal not forged by man". "And you weren't forged, mate - you were born, just like every other Human," Bob helpfully informed him. "Entire empires have crumbled due to niggling little loopholes just like that." Just what he always wanted to be - a loophole. Well, he'd been worse, hadn't he? 

The strange thing was as the two gods stood in front of the black fire, the shadow they threw on the white sand floor was red; red and writhing in a manner inconsistent with the fire. It was then he figured out that, in spite of how it looked, that wasn't a fire at all - was that some of that "primordial darkness"? He suddenly wondered how it was moving. 

"I am Ares," Ares agreed, although he sounded uncertain of that. 

"Yes, you are!" Kuk agreed, sounding more like an agent than ever. "Warrior of warriors! King of kings!" 

"Morons of morons," Logan muttered bitterly. 

Kuk had steered Ares around to face the flames ( or whatever they were ), and they got a good look at Kuk's face. He was hideous - Logan thought the rear view of his bald green head was bad enough. But he had bulging eyes the size and color of grapefruits, with black pupils more like diamonds than slits, no nose, and a lipless mouth so wide it looked like he could swallow his own head if he had a mind to do it. Some frogs were cute, but Kuk was not one of them. It was a good thing he had no neck, otherwise his big frog head never would have blended in with the rest of his humanoid body. 

"You will have that glory again, Ares! Just stick to the plan, and we - " Kuk's large eyes seemed to take in the cavern, and he unwisely glanced up and saw the three of them looking down at them from above. Bob waved, just to be friendly. 

" - have company," Kuk finished, pulling his arm away from Ares. 

Logan jumped down, over the edge,a thirty foot drop that felt like nothing, and he wondered if it was just gravity that was off here or it was just being infused with Bob power, but even the landing didn't seem that bad. 

Still, he was barely on his feet at the bottom of the cavern when Kuk let out a very un-frog like roar, and the whole world went black - the black fire seemed to explode out of its ring of stones ( he only realized belatedly the stones were all shaped like scarabs - did that mean something? ), and paint every available surface with night. 

Logan could feel it crawling up his skin, trying to ooze up into his nose and mouth, but he did his best to shake it off and stumbled forward, relying on his sense of smell to find Kuk - he didn't smell like a frog more than he smelled like a wet dog, and wasn't that worse? 

A spark of light shot outward, towards the roof of the cavern, a fragment of light so blue he knew Bob had to be responsible for it. Funny thing was, it too was swallowed by the living dark. "Give it up, Kuk, and I won't hurt you," Bob shouted. It sounded like he was only a few feet away, but he knew better than to trust his hearing. He hit something with the toe of his boot - he couldn't see what it was, but he assumed it to be one of those scarab rocks. He was getting closer, in spite of the black stuff oozing in his eyes. His claws were already out. 

"Fuck you!" Kuk yelled, and he also sounded a few feet away, but in front of him. "It's over, Bob, and you lost! You're not strong enough to take on Kumiho! Even Eris isn't now that - " He paused suddenly, as if he realized he was about to say a very wrong thing. "It's over!" 

"Now that she what?" Bob replied quickly, sounding somewhat tense ( well, for him ). "What has she done?" 

"Like I'm going to tell you! You have five seconds to take your beasts and leave, or I let loose chaos!" 

The smell of wet dog filled Logan's nose, and he thought he was picking up the feeling of unholy body heat near his skin. Bingo. "No you ain't," Logan growled, and jabbed his claws forward into what he assumed was Kuk. 


	6. Part 6

There was a noise, wet and hideous, somewhere between a scream and a gag, and suddenly the darkness seemed to retreat. Logan had been trying to aim from memory as well as smell - he'd been going for the stomach. But as light rushed in, he saw that he'd aimed a bit high and stabbed him through the base of his chest, just where base of the rib cage and the gut met. He was face to face with frog boy, who was gaping at him with that oversized mouth ( his breath reeked of sulphur ), his softball sized eyes looking as if they might roll right out of their sockets. 

Kuk sucked in a sharp breath, and Bob, sounding like he was on level with him, said, "What were you saying, Kuk?" Ares paced away, looking as confused as always. 

"You deceitful bastard," Kuk managed to spit, almost literally. Logan had to look away to avoid the spittle. 

"Hah! That's quite rich coming from you. So what has Kumiho done to cement her power?" Bob demanded. 

"Hey!" Helga shouted, and that was Logan's only warning as something crashed violently into the back of his skull. 

Stars exploded in front of his eyes and he dropped to his knees, yanking his claw with him. While Kuk let out a yelp of pain, he still pulled free of his claw , and the darkness swarmed in like ravening insects. "I told you!" Kuk shouted. "You can't fight - " 

There was a meaty wet thunk, and the darkness died away again. Once it did, the reason was apparent - Kuk now had a big ass sword sticking out of the center of his skull; it had neatly sliced his big head in two, and darkness was leaking out like blood. His mouth hung open loosely, and he made a noise that sounded like "Uh," before he collapsed to the cave floor, deader than a sack of hammers. 

"What the fuck did you do?!" Bob shouted angrily at Ares, as Logan got up, rubbing the back of his head. The lump was starting to heal, sinking back into his scalp. 

"I should be the one to kill him," Ares roared back, face orange with irritation. "He was mocking me!" 

"You finally got that, huh asshole?" Logan growled, snarling at him. He knew he'd been the one to hit him with something. He also knew that Ares's sword wasn't forged by man - it was conjured up by Bob, to replace his broken one. God, he hated loopholes. "Did you also get that I wasn't tryin' to fuckin' kill him?! If I wanted him dead, he'd have been dead already!" 

Ares glared at him, as if from the bottom of a well; his eyes were an abyss he stared out of, holes in his head that would never heal. "No mortal talks to me that way." 

Logan glared back at him, matching him hate for hate. "And no one fucking hits me." 

"We were pinning him to this dimension," Bob said, getting between them before it got ugly. But Bob did not look happy, and his every word had an edge. "I need to know who Kumiho has absorbed so we can adequately fight her. And now that you've killed Kuk, we are no better off than we were before." 

Ares tried to stare him down, failed, and turned away with an angry huff. 

"I told you we shouldn't have let him come along," Helga said pointedly. 

Bob just threw up his hands and sighed. "You gamble. Sometimes you win big, and sometimes you completely crap out." 

"Story of my life," Logan grumbled, although he didn't know if that was true or not. "So where do we go from here?" 

Bob scrubbed a hand through his hair as he thought, once again trying to formulate a plan on the fly. Luckily, Bob seemed pretty good at that. "Well, we - " 

"It is over," Ares proclaimed, sounding very much like the bombastic old god he was supposed to be. "Our best course of action is to find a secure dimension, and wait out the initial storm." 

"Wow, you give up easily, don't ya?" Helga replied derisively. 

But Bob looked at Ares with something akin to suspicion. "What do you know?" 

Ares remained facing the wall, seemingly looking at a tiki with a gargoyle head carved in the rock, but then his massive shoulders slumped, and his chin hung down on his chest. "Kumiho was intent on absorbing Fenrir." 

Helga's tail suddenly went limp, falling to the sand floor with a delicate thud. "No way. No fucking way." 

"Don't worry about it," Bob quickly told her, in his most placating voice. "She has no access to Balder's gate." 

"She has access to Balder," Ares said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. 

For a moment they all went quiet, Ares still facing the wall, him and helga staring at Bob, waiting for him to tell them that wasn't possible. But Bob grimaced, and he saw a fleeting fear pass behind his eyes. Oh shit. "You said Balder was dis-incorporated, or whatever the fuck," Logan snapped, wondering if Bob had lied to him about that too. 

Bob nodded, but looked very close to chagrined. "Yeah, he is, but Kumiho's abilities include entering the mind - " 

"He has no mind to enter if he only exists as energy!" 

His ultrablue eyes stared into his in a way that made him feel like he was nailed to the spot. "What is the mind but a collection of coherent bioelectrical impulses, mate? Even spread out, Kumi could pull them together." 

"So how would that give her access to the gate?" He demanded angrily. "I thought it went with Fenrir." 

"It did. But since Balder created it, if she could access his mind, she could find a way to access the gate or the dimension." 

"So why didn't it ever occur to you as a possibility?" Logan asked, not bothering to hide his rage. If Bob didn't bother to edit his info, maybe shit like this wouldn't happen. 

Bob was starting to get pissed off at him -  he could see it in his eyes. " 'Cause normally she doesn't have that kind of power. But with Kuk's help, she probably does." Bob switched his gaze to Ares. "And perhaps you gave a hand there, 'ey mate?" 

"Absorb means like it does for Rogue, right? " He asked, only for confirmation. 

Bob shrugged, but never looked at him. "Sort of. But when one god absorbs another, it's not temporary - the energy is completely incorporated in the other. The absorbed is subsumed by the absorber." 

"Kumiho could subsume Fenrir?" Helga asked, sounding dubious. 

"Given enough power, yes." 

Helga walked behind him, but Logan didn't turn to see why. His suspicion was confirmed when he heard a squelching wet noise, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Helga pulling Ares's sword out of Kuk's bisected head. She pulled her arm back like she was going to throw it, and he bet she was - playing pin the tail on the Ares from a distance. "Fucking asshole," she snarled. 

"Stop," Bob said, and of course, much to her obvious disgust, she did. 

"He killed Kuk to cover up his own involvement in this!" She said angrily. 

"Probably. But he's not going anywhere at the moment. In fact, I'm sure he wishes to atone for his mistakes. Don't you Airs?" 

Ares didn't answer, and Logan wondered if he should take the sword from Helga and finish what she was trying to start. 

"Don't even think about it, Logan," Bob said, still not turning to look at him. 

Logan continued to think about it, if only to annoy him. 

"Where did she plan to go after that, Ares? Where is ground zero?" 

He was silent for a long moment, and Logan wondered if Bob could push a fellow Higher. Well, they couldn't all be immune to him, could they? And there was an implication that Bob was stronger than Ares, when you boiled it down. "Where do you think? She expected you would chase her through the dimensions, whether you were strong enough or not. So she decided to go to the last place you would look, and the place that would hurt you the most." 

It sounded like a bad riddle, but Bob must have figured it out, because a panicky look flashed across his face. "Oh shit. That tricky little bitch." 

"Where?" Helga asked, and he must have released her, because she lowered the sword to her side. But she didn't let it go, and he knew she was waiting for Ares to just look at her funny. 

Bob glanced at them both, and grimaced ruefully. "Home." 

Before Logan could ask for clarification of the term, the air seemed to part around them, and the world of white sand fell away into darkness. 

12 

    Reality coalesced into a desert of clay colored sand, the slowly setting sun like a gigantic bloodshot eye staring down at them all. In spite of the cool breeze, heat rose in waves off the desert floor, and sweat instantly beaded on Logan's  forehead. He judged it to still be hovering close to a hundred degrees. 

The red rock outcropping in the distance, and the sharp smell of eucalyptus on the wind told him exactly where they were - some Earth, in the Australian outback. Of course, home - Bob's adopted home, Australia. 

"What fresh hell is this?" Ares asked, looking around confused. But he looked perpetually confused, like he was three pages behind everyone else. No wonder he was such a grouchy son of a bitch. 

"Why the Outback?" Helga asked Bob. "Why not Sydney?" 

"Because by the time anyone notices somethin' happenin' in the Never Never, it's too late to do anything about it," Bob said, glancing around with great scrutiny. When he looked in Logan direction, his eyes were glowing blue, energy leaking beyond his eyelids like tendrils of smoke. "She's here." 

It was then that reality was ripped out from beneath them like a flimsy carpet, and suddenly they were on the red rock outcropping, facing a woman who looked like an angel. 

She was tall and lean, clothed in a flimsy but clinging white gown, accented with snow white feathers. Her long hair was like molten gold, and flowed around her head as if they were underwater; it seemed like it was alive, moving in a counter motion all its own, caressing the side of her angelically beautiful and youthful face. Her eyes were initially the empty azure of a summer sky, but suddenly, as she focused on Bob, they became sea green flames confined by the sockets of her eyes. "I was wondering when you'd get here," she hissed, her voice as light and beautiful as the sound of chimes. Logan automatically thought of the myth of "sirens", and wondered if anyone ever bought it. 

She was so focused on Bob she didn't notice Helga draw back her arm and throw Ares sword. 

It was a dead on hit - it skewered the angelic Kumiho straight through the face, and she staggered back, looking rather top heavy. But the fact that she didn't even fall over was a really bad sign. 

She made a very angry noise and waved her hand dismissively towards Helga, and she went flying over the edge of the cliff. 

Logan dove for her as he heard Ares and Bob and Kumiho going at it in some mystical way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He landed hard on his stomach, half over the lip of the cliff, and was afraid she had fallen too fast for him to catch, but he just managed to snag the tip of her tail. It curled instantly around his wrist, and he knew she was still conscious, which was good. He bet they both didn't want to find out if Moros was enough to protect her from a ninety foot fall to the scree littered sand below. 

She looked up at him as she started to climb his arm. "For what it's worth, good shot," he told her. 

She gave him a wry grimace, a bit of green blood trickling from her nostrils. "Good catch." 

He shrugged, and didn't want to tell her he got lucky. 

After they were both back on the cliff completely, they looked around in time to see Kumiho tell Ares, "Burn." 

Ares didn't so much burst into flames as explode into them, a violently green energy that seemed to consume him like he was nothing but rags soaked in gasoline. Bob had dropped to his knees, grabbing his head like he was in pain and bleeding blue energy out onto the rocks. Kumiho had pulled the sword out of her face with no obvious ill effects, and stared at the two of them like they were delectable cuts of meat. "Poor, poor lowers," she said, her voice dripping with condescension. "The first of your breed to die, and for what? Do you even know what the magnitude of your sacrifice is for?" 

"Eat me, sunshine," Helga said, and tackled her. 

Logan was right there with her, and as soon as Kumiho hit the rock Logan drove down with his newly sprung claw, straight into Kumi's swan like neck. He felt the tips sink into the rock below her, and ripped to the side regardless, decapitating her. Green energy poured out like blood, and pooled on the rock. 

Logan shared a glance with Helga, and didn't have to ask if she thought something was wrong, because it was obvious she was feeling it too. 

"Interesting. I see why you were chosen," Kumiho said, in her crystalline sing song voice. It wasn't her decapitated head talking, but her - she was now standing about ten feet away from them, eyeing them with what might generously be called contempt. The body that had been beneath them a moment before was gone, with not even a splatter of green left behind. Oh shit. 

Ares vaporized, turned completely into a swirl of orange energy that was violently disrupted and "dispersed" by green energy the exact same colors as the flames that had consumed him. Was that what subsuming another god looked like? It made Rogue's absorbing thing look kind of tame - mercifully so. But where was Bob? He wasn't where he had been - he didn't appear to be anywhere. 

"You are deliciously vicious little creatures, aren't you? You're like little shrews - you write meaner checks than your miniscule butts can cash." 

"Come over here and say that," Helga said, but they both knew it didn't matter anymore. They were dealing with a god who manipulated minds easier than Xavier and Bob combined - and had already taken Bob out of the equation. Where the hell was he? 

Kumiho gave them a smile that was colder than a night in Antarctica. It grew slowly, full of malice and poison, and Logan knew he'd never seen an eviler thing hiding behind such an angelic face. On her best day, Mystique and the Sisters could only hope to be a fifth as malevolent as this thing. 

Helga grabbed his arm, and he knew why. They were both about to die - right here, right now, probably much more violently than poor, dumb Ares. There'd be no "rebirth" as energy for Kumiho to exploit - they'd simply die as weak and frivolous mortals, way out of their league. 

It was in a moment of white hot hate - he didn't so much care about himself, but Helga deserved a hell of a lot better than this, and where the fuck was Bob?! - that he really felt what had been in the background of his mind all this time. That swirl of blue energy, the stuff circling his brain and infusing his veins with power, always there but unnoticed by him as his body simply adapted to its presence; the stuff that Bob had given him to fight with. 

It almost seemed irrelevant that it was only a fraction of what Bob had, and would theoretically be of no use against her. Bob had said together they were powerful - more than the sum of their parts - and he wondered if he was just blowing sunshine up his skirt, or if he honestly and truly meant it. He decided if he was ever going to find out, it was going to be now. If nothing else, it had the element of surprise going for it. 

He focused on his anger, closed his eyes, and let his depths of rage come out into that glorious blue light. It was like having a star inside his brain, a beautiful light ... now surging and pulsing with power, waiting to explode. 

Logan opened his eyes on Kumiho, and saw her through a filter of blue. 

He screamed in rage, and just let it go - he had no idea how to control the energy; all he knew was rage was the trigger that shut Arakis down, and if it worked once, it would work again. He shut his eyes as he screamed, hands balled into such tight fists his claws sprung out of their own accord, but he didn't really feel it anymore. His body was a river of blue light, and he felt no pain, no boundaries, nothing constricting his once fragile form. He was a cleansing fire, and he knew nothing but that light. 

Logan had to stop when he felt spent, hunched over until his forehead touched rock, and he was slowly getting a sense of himself again, of the body around him. Just like after he used it in Bob's body back on Dis, he felt more completely spent than he had ever had before. 

"Good going, tiger," Helga said, her hand now on his back. "I see why Bob gives you his energy." 

As soon as he could open his eyes and look around, he did. It looked like they were still on a rocky crag, but this time it wasn't red but blue. And the air smelled like parchment. 

No fucking way . 

He looked up just in time to see a pretty pissed off Amaunet transform from her serpentine form to her humanoid one. "What are you creatures doing in this sacred space?" She demanded. 

"What the fuck did I do?" Logan asked Helga, wondering if even she knew. 

But she did. of course. Good old Helga. "You opened up a dimensional rift and got us the fuck out of there before she could smite us. Bob couldn't have done better himself." She didn't seem the least bit phased. 

"I teleported us?" He didn't even know he could do that. Or how to do that. 

"Where is Bob?" Amaunet asked angrily. 

"Fuck if we know," he snapped at her, not in the mood for any more shit from goddesses. how in the fuck could he have teleported them anywhere? how did you open a dimensional rift? How the hell did you even know where you were going? "Kumiho just subsumed Ares, and Bob disappeared, and the crazy bitch was gonna kill us before I remembered Bob left me an escape hatch." Escape hatch ... okay, that had a familiar ring to it, and not just in this context ... 

Amaunet's gold eyes seemed to widen ever so slightly. "Kumiho subsumed Ares?" 

"And Fenrir, if we can believe what we were told," Helga informed her. "Although after having seen Ares burst into flames, I'm willing to believe it." 

It was really hard to read the expression on a snake woman's face, but she did look pretty shocked. For the first time, he realized the dark reddish-purple sky of this dimension was actually quite soothing. "She is doing it then," she said, but not to them. She seemed to be staring at a nothing point in front of her face, not even seeing them anymore. "Kuk is dead?" It almost wasn't a question. 

"Ares killed him," he told her. "He finally figured out frog boy was insultin' him." 

"Balder, Kombu, Hermes ... in her avarice, she has subsumed many." 

He exchanged a questioning glance with Helga. Okay, Hermes was a real god too? Who the hell was Kombu, though? Sounded like an African deity, but he was only judging that from the vowel sounds of the name. And where the hell was she pulling these names from? Was there some kind of deity hotline? If so, why weren't they using it before? 

"And Bob is next on her list if you don't get off your royal ass and help," Helga said savagely, gaining Amaunet's deeply offended attention. "Do you really want her to get Bob's power too?" 

In spite of the waves of hate coming off her, aimed at Helga, it was clear that she thought Kumiho taking on Bob's powers was a really bad idea. Maybe she had already, maybe that's why he was gone ... but wouldn't Amaunet have known? "Look, lady, are you gonna help us or not?" He asked, feeling a little stronger as his healing abilities kicked in, even in the wake of psychic injuries that probably didn't leave a scar. "We gotta find Bob, and we got to put her away for good." 

Once again, Amaunet glared at him like he was the most aggravating insect she had ever had the misfortune to pluck out of her skin. "Is that why Bob brought you, mortal? To irritate everyone to death?" 

Before he could tell her to go fuck herself, Amaunet said, somewhat dismissively, "You have the ability to find him yourself, mortal. Find him, and tell him we will use him as a conduit. Kumiho will be stopped." 

"What do you mean he'll be used as a conduit?" Helga asked warily. 

"What do you mean I can find him?" Logan wondered. But even as he asked, he realized - the escape hatch. That's what Bob said he put in his mind, so Logan could take over if Kumiho exploited his fears. And that's what Kumiho was doing, wasn't she? She had put him somewhere where he was the only living thing on the planet. She couldn't kill him directly, so she was trying to break him down. Or so he assumed, but it would make sense - when she said burn, Ares burst into flame, but Bob only grabbed his head. He didn't even smoke. 

He found Helga looking at him funny. "Still with us, bud?" 

"I can find him," he admitted, a little stunned at the idea. "I'm not exactly sure how, but I can." 

She looked slightly relieved. "Then go get him. I'll see you back at bitch central with the cavalry." 

He nodded, smirking at the description "bitch central". See, that was why you just had to love Helga - why weren't there more people like her? No drama, just getting shit done. He wished she were a mutant so he could pull her into the "X Men" - not only to annoy the hell out of Scott, but to make sure he always had someone on his back who could kick ass and take names. If she was covering him, he'd have no worries at all. 

The problem here was he really didn't know how to work this crazy thing. But he didn't know he could teleport them out of danger either. Maybe, rather than get angry this time, he should just let go - the energy was quite literally Bob, wasn't it? Wouldn't it be drawn to the place it had come from? Or maybe that was totally fucking wrong, but it was worth a shot. So he closed his eyes and concentrated on the energy he could still feel inside his mind, letting it ebb and flow and follow its own natural impulses. 

He let the energy flow through him, over him, carry him away like a river of light, and it took all of his will not to fight against it; his default position was to fight, his first knee jerk response to everything. He was aware that meant something, but he really didn't want to know what. 

It felt like it was it was filling him, taking him over, and carrying him along, to where he didn't know - he just hoped it was to Bob. 

There was an odd sensation - not quite like falling, but something close to it - and he knew something had changed drastically. It was the air; it seemed dry and dead, and sound didn't carry. There was no sound at all; it was beyond deathly quiet. He could feel sand beneath his hands, but it wasn't sand; it was too fine, too soft. 

Logan opened his eyes, and found he was kneeling in a pit of burned ashes. From what smell there was in this dead and colorless location, he could tell they were human ashes. 

Oh boy, this was going to be a fun place. 

13 

    Bob had not been kidding about this being a dead place. It brought to mind the word necropolis, and Logan had no idea he knew what that word meant until now. 

The buildings that were standing in this blasted wasteland were tumbledown shacks, their sides so washed out by sand abrasion and harsh sun that they had no color at all. Where there was soil, it was an unhealthy and dead cigarette ash grey; there were no plants, not even cacti. The sky was a washed out ivory, edging towards beige, and the sun was like the eye of a baleful god, watching closely as everything withered and died beneath its gaze. 

"Bob!" He shouted, getting to his feet. But the air was so dead it was like shouting into a thick towel - he could hear his own voice come back to his own ears as muffled. What a creepy dimension. 

He wandered a bit, until he came to the edge of a crumbling cliff, overlooking the sea. Bob had been right - it looked like glass; flat and shallow, two dimensional somehow, as if he had accidentally wandered into a bad oil painting hanging on the wall of a cheap motel. If you weren't dead here, you would wish you were dead. 

Now where the hell was Bob? 

He knew this place was throwing off his senses when he turned around and nearly jumped out of his skin as Bob hugged him. He tried to squirm out of his grasp as he asked, "Where the hell did you come from?" 

"I was gonna ask you the same thing," he said, pulling away and holding him at arm's length. He thought Bob understood he was not a "huggy" sort of person. "I've been trying to open a gateway out of here, but she has this place locked down tight. How are you and Hel?" 

"We're okay, just wondering what the fuck happened to you." 

"Ares toast?" 

He nodded. "Totally absorbed. We saw Amaunet and she said they'd use you as a conduit to shut Kumiho down, but you have to get your ass back there first." 

"Finally! Man, it takes a wholesale slaughter for them to wake up, doesn't it?" He then gave him an odd look. "How did you see Amaunet?" 

"I tried to use your power against Kumiho, and somehow teleported us back to Ogdoad." 

"Good move." 

"I got no fuckin' idea how I did it." 

"All that matters is you did. Thanks for lookin' out for Hel too." He then sighed, in a way that suggested he was gearing up for something, and said, "Ready to go back? I have a feelin' this is gonna get ugly." 

"I don't know how to get back," he pointed out. 

"I do, and now that you're here I'm sure I can get us out. You ready? I'm sure it will be ugly from the get go, 'cause Hel drew first blood, and you pulled out before she could toast you too. And if you thought she was bad before, wait'll you see her pissed." 

Logan simply stared at him. "That's the worst pep talk I have ever heard." 

"Sorry mate, left the pom-poms at home." 

Man, the things he did for the weirdest people. 

Bob kept ahold of his arms, and he could feel power surging through him as Bob's eyes filled with blue light. He didn't know if he was siphoning off power from him, or giving him more - it felt the same either way. 

"Tell me something," he asked, surprised he could speak. "Can we win this?" 

"We'll have to," Bob replied, his voice sounding just slightly inhuman. 

That wasn't really an answer at all. 

14 

    For a moment, Logan thought Bob had zapped them into the wrong place. 

But it smelled right, and he knew that this was simply what Bob had been warning him about - Kumiho pissed off. 

The desert was in flames. Not normal flames, but the same unholy green fire that had consumed Ares, and they reached up eighty feet, almost to the very lip of the cliff. It wasn't heat that was threatening to do them all in before they even took a step, though - it wasn't heat that was baking them but power, a kind that made his flesh want to crawl off his muscles and get the fuck out of here. 

Kumiho was now hovering slightly above the crag, green energy sketched in the shape of wings seemingly keeping her aloft. She really loved the irony of her "angel" image, didn't she? Her eyes oozed with green fire, mimicking the landscape bellow. But the moment they zapped into this hellish scene, she began, "You're too late, B - " 

A sentence she never got to finish, as Bob gestured violently with his fist, and she went flying backwards, hitting the rock with a meaty ( and not angelic ) thud. "Oh, can the balloon juice sister," Bob snapped, storming towards her. "You want to subsume me? Come and get me!" 

Logan was right behind him, but had barely gotten two feet when things flew out of the emerald flames surrounding them. 

His first thought was it was birds, somehow caught up in the flames and flying towards the only opening, but there was no way anything living on this plane could have survived that without a little help. 

And they weren't no fucking birds either. 

They were shaped more like manta rays, with long, whiplike tails, and they weren't on fire - they were made completely of green flame. There were dozens of them now, filling the bloody red sky, and zooming towards them like dive bombers. "On your zero," he shouted to Bob, as he popped his claws and slashed out at one swooping down towards him. 

It was like cutting through nothing, a cloud, and it dispersed instantly, but a sickly feeling travelled down his claws and through his body. It stunned him for a moment; it was like ... what was it like? It was like Rogue touching him, but only briefly with a fingertip, perhaps - it felt like some energy was drawn from him just coming in contact with the thing long enough to slice it to ribbons. That's when he understood the magnitude of what was going on here: Kumiho had demons named after her that drained the "life force" of their victims. The flames here could do the same thing - they didn't burn you, they consumed you; they absorbed your energy and spit out whatever was left. Letting them touch you was instantaneous death ... and that meant everything in this desert was now dead, including any plants and animals with the misfortune to have been in the way. 

And that's when he realized that empty dimension that Bob had been trapped in - that was a plane she had already devoured. 

Bob was right - they had to win. Otherwise, Earth was next on her menu, and nothing would be left but a pile of ash. 


	7. Part 7

Bob had his hands full exchanging blasts of energy with Kumiho, so he just slashed out at all the dive bombing fire demons/godlets/whatever the hell that he could, letting the combination of Bob's power and his healing factor help him withstand the pull of energy the things robbed him of whenever he cut them in half. 

At some point Helga appeared behind him, and joined him in slicing these things up, as she was now carrying a sword with her. "They kicked me out," she told him, with a proud grin. "But I stole this on the way." She gestured with the sword before using it to slice one of Kumiho's minions in half. 

He shook his head and went back to killing the things, but he couldn't help but smile. Sometimes Helga reminded him of himself, but not in a scary way. 

It was then that the cliff began to quake so violently they both hit the rock, and Logan dug one of his claws in to keep himself stable. He glanced back to make sure Hel was okay, but she had had much the same thought and buried the sword in the crag, keeping herself in one place. 

Logan thought for a moment this was it - the cliff would collapse, and send them all sprawling into those consumptive flames. They wouldn't even have a chance to fight back, they'd just be absorbed into Kumiho, an appetizer for a bitch goddess. 

But when he glanced around, he saw the desert floor itself seemed to be undulating like a storm tossed sea, and the flames were being extinguished, dying in the tumult. Perhaps that back up Amaunet had promised them had finally arrived. 

Bob slammed down hard onto the rock barely ten feet from him, violently enough to leave a dent. He'd landed on his back, but didn't look conscious. And while Logan thought he was bleeding, that wasn't true - it was blue energy bleeding out his closed eyes and open hands, not so much pooling on the rock as evaporating into thin air. 

"Idiot,"Kumiho said, and now her voice was completely inhuman, and barely qualified as female. She continued hovering a few inches above the rock, but her wings were gone - her hair was now a cascade of green fire, matching the green flames bleeding from her eye sockets. "I'm more powerful than all the Highers of that shitty realm. Why did you think you even had the slightest chance against me, outcast?" 

Logan wanted to attack the gloating bitch, but knew - as much as he hated to admit it to himself - that she could swat him down without so much as batting an eyelash. What he needed to do - and he didn't understand why exactly, it was just an instinct - was reach Bob. He had a feeling if he could just get in contact with Bob, it would be enough. Enough to do what he had no idea, but he trusted that it meant something. 

But the thought had just barely entered his head when Kumiho's flaming eyes settled on him. "Oh no you don't, insect," she growled. 

He lunged for Bob, just as she said, "Break." 

His right arm, extended towards Bob, snapped with a noise not unlike a rifle shot inside a metal room. The pain exploded through and made him scream even before he hit the crag face first, just short of his target. 

Fucking christ, she broke his arm - she broke his adamantium! And it hurt more than he could have ever imagined. It was like red hot needles had been stabbed through his muscles and nerves, and they kept heating up, growing deeper, as his healing factor kicked in and didn't know how to deal with it. It could heal the bone, but not the adamantium around it. It felt like his entire arm was on fire, burning from the inside out. 

Helga tried to attack, but Kumiho broke something on her too - something even more major, judging from the way she dropped like a stone. All he could think was it was her neck or her spine - hopefully Moros's influence would keep that from being permanent. 

Tears streamed from his eyes from the radiant pain pulsing through his arm, and he couldn't even think about moving it, unless he wanted the pain to come back even worse, as if new and fresh. But Bob was just a couple of feet away, if he could just reach him ... 

He forced himself to move, biting back the molten pain as best he could, but before he could do much of anything, his left leg snapped in a surge of fiery pain that made him see red and scream once more. 

"It's not even worth it," Kumiho said. "Even with you, he doesn't have the strength to overcome me. Why do you make yourself suffer for so much nothing?" 

His eyes were so full of tears that the world looked like it was drowning, awash in water, and the pain was constant and terrible, like a drill bit boring into the center of his brain. He gritted his teeth so hard he was sure he heard some crack, and shoved himself forward with his one good arm and one good leg. "Eat me," he growled, but it came out more like a whimper as he tried to keep from screaming again. It hurt, god it hurt, and his ineffectual healing factor was making it worse. Every single movement made the pain flare anew, and he had the slightly giddy realization he was about to pass out from it. Insane. He'd been vivisected alive and he hadn't passed out then, or at least hadn't passed out enough to suit him. He could taste blood in his mouth, and realized Kumiho might have broken more than his bones. 

"Maybe," Kumiho said mockingly, referring to his insult. "Ask me nicely." 

They had lost. He knew they had, and even if he could reach Bob, it was all very irrelevant. She was too strong, and they were fighting for a cause that had been lost before they got here. He was within arm's reach of Bob, but on the right - to actually be able to reach out to him with his good arm would take more maneuvering than he could accomplish. So he took a deep breath, nearly choking on his own blood, and moved his right arm. 

He screamed as the arm didn't move so much as spasm, but he had a feeling his right hand, as limp as it was, came in contact with Bob's shoulder. He almost did pass out, but as his vision turned red, nearly fading to black, the light turned blue. 

He could feel the fire inside him once more, but it was blue and cleansing and seemed to burn away the pain as he saw the world once more through a filter of azure. 

Kumiho chuckled, her voice deep and cold. "Touching, Bob. You want to die with your pets." 

Logan's vision cleared, became sharper, and he saw Bob had something in his left hand that he hadn't had before. It was a rock - a red rock. 

The heart of Agrona. Where had that come from? Or, perhaps more appropriately, where the hell had Bob been keeping it? 

Bob shattered it in his fist, like it had been made of nothing but clay, and violently red energy swirled around his hand before flowing up his arm like a reverse photograph of a bloodletting. 

"Heart" had not been a metaphor, had it? 

Bob rose to his feet, the red energy entering and swirling into his energetically blue eyes. "You're not the only one who can absorb energy, Kumi." 

Before she could react, he launched himself at her in a full bodied tackle that any rugby player would have been proud of, and they both went flying off the edge of the cliff. 

Still seeing the world through a cerulean filter, he saw both Kumiho and Bob lose their humanoid forms and transform into their pure energy states long before they could the desert floor. Energetic clouds of red, blue, and green energy swirled violently, almost too bright to look upon, except he was still seeing blue, feeling the energy draining out of him. It was hard to say who, if anyone, was winning. 

He felt himself fading, and he tried to hold on as long as he could, but the energy draining out seemed to take all his strength with him. He thought, with some irony, that it would kill him if he died before he saw who won. 

But when he closed his eyes, he felt such warmth in the darkness that he really didn't care anymore. 

15 

    Logan woke up on sand. 

But he knew even before he opened his eyes it was wrong. It was softer and denser than desert sand, and he smelled brine, heard the rising and falling of waves, the cries of sea birds irritated that there were creatures disturbing their favorite section of coastline. 

He opened his eyes, and wondered how the hell they had ended up on a beach. 

It was still early morning, the sun wasn't quite up yet, but the cloud layer was so thick it was almost impossible to tell. The sky was like a ceiling of grey cotton. It wasn't raining, just misting, and just cold enough to make it all rather miserable. But it was a nice change from the heat of the Outback. 

Logan sat up before he remembered he had broken limbs to watch out for, but they weren't broken anymore. He wasn't hurt, he was fine, and he knew, at the same time, that Bob's energy was no longer in his head. He wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but it left him feeling slightly off somehow. 

He looked to find they were on a beach, just a few feet from the incoming tide, and even in the grey half-light the ocean was an incredibly deep and vivid blue, a color he had seen only once in his life - looking over the sea from Bob's porch. So they were still in Australia, just out of the desert. 

Helga was laying on the sand, just out of arm's reach, and didn't appear to be injured, but some injuries weren't obvious. He felt a little better when she came to with a jolt, and looked around as bewildered as he must have. "You okay?" He asked. 

She nodded, barely sparing him a glance. "Yeah. You?" 

"Yeah." 

"Where's Bob?" 

"I don't know." 

"Where are we?" 

"Australia still. I think." 

He got up, and held out a hand so she could pull herself up. She did, and they both looked around the empty beach. It looked like there were luxury houses just up the beach. On the slope of a hill looking out over the sea. They were probably trespassing on a private beach, but who really gave a fuck? 

They looked around fruitlessly once more, and Helga asked, "So, did we win?" 

That was an amazingly good question. "I don't know. But we're still in one piece, right? We must have." 

But even as he said it, it seemed strangely hollow. 

Maybe they did win, but at what cost? 

*** 

    They weren't far from Bob's Sydney place, so they went there, but as soon as they were in the door, he knew he wasn't here. 

Helga went off to look, shouting for him, but while the place smelled heavily of Bob, none of the scent was recent. Logan simply collapsed on the couch and put his head in his hands, letting himself rest. Even though he was physically okay, he still absurdly tired - dimensional "jet lag", he supposed - that had happened before. 

He didn't want to see Helga's face as she came downstairs, but he didn't have to. She came slowly down the stairs and collapsed beside him on the sofa. She didn't say anything for a long time - the only noise was the metronomic ticking of a clock somewhere in the kitchen. Finally she asked him, "Is he dead?" 

"No." He said it without thinking about it; he really didn't know if it was true or not. But it was hard to imagine. "He just didn't need us anymore. Maybe he took the fight to another upper realm where we weren't wanted." 

"You don't have him in your head anymore,do you?" 

"No." 

"Shit." She wiped off the sign of Moros around her eye with the back of her hand, and grumbled, "If he's dead, I'll kill him." 

Well, stranger things had happened. 

*** 

    He knew he'd fallen asleep on the couch - he laid down on it as soon as Helga had resolved to call some people who did work for Bob in the Outback, and went to call them. She was clinging to the idea that maybe he was so badly hurt he was still out there, and couldn't, for whatever reason, get back. ( Shagged himself out getting them back here? ) Logan didn't believe that - he didn't think Bob was around, although he couldn't say why. 

Once he stretched out on the sofa, listening to Helga in the kitchen, talking with someone about "taking the flyer out" over the phone, he felt drowsier than he had a right to be. He threw a forearm over his eyes and figured he'd get a nap in before Hel shoved him awake and dragged him to some airport. 

But soon he was dreaming he was on the beach again, the sky overhead clear this time and as blue as the sea. He knew he wasn't alone, but it wasn't until he sat up that he saw Bob sitting on the beach too, about ten feet away from him. He was staring out at the ocean as if there was something new to look at, and then, aware of his scrutiny, said, "I always thought this was a pretty place." 

"Few beaches are real armpits," he pointed out. 

"True." 

"So where are you?" 

Bob sighed, and turned to face him, never getting up. "I'm in one of the Higher Realms. I kinda got banged up a bit - I thought Fenrir alone was bad - so I'm recuperating' up here." 

"You dead?" 

"Aw fuck no mate - do I look dead to you? I'm good, just not ready to face the lower realms just yet." 

Logan didn't know if he should believe him or not. "But you're comin' back?" 

"Of course! You guys need someone watchin' your backs, and they're kickin' me out as soon as I'm fully corporeal again. I did the thing they wanted me to do for 'em - now they want me to go the fuck away again." 

"And you're sure they're not in-laws?" 

He gave him that rakish, shit eating grin that he probably had patented. "Not most of 'em, no. I just didn't want you guys thinkin' I kicked it." 

"So we did win?" 

He nodded. "Kumiho is no more. She bit off more than she could chew, and got herself violently discorporated. Apparently she never learned you can't fight city hall the hard way." 

"You knew you could get killed in the process, didn't you?" 

"Sure. But has that ever stopped you from doin' something?" 

He hated it when he turned around questions on him like that. He scowled at him, but Bob just continued to grin at him, unfazed. "We're not talkin' about me. If you knew you were probably gonna die, you could've warned us." 

"But why? What could you do about it? Besides, I'm not dead - you only wish I was." He winked at him, but then his expression sobered somewhat, perhaps because he realized that Logan wasn't exactly buying his "I'm perfectly all right" claim. "I'm gonna be okay," he insisted. "And I'm comin' back - can't get rid of me that easy. I just wanted to thank you and Hel - you guys saved the world. And still, nobody will give you a table at a fancy restaurant." 

"Isn't that always the way?" He picked up a shell and tossed it into the ocean. It barely made a splash, and was quickly lost in the white caps. "I never wanted to save the world, you know? I hate it." 

Bob chuckled knowingly. "But that's the great irony of the world, mate - the people who want it the least sometimes fight the hardest for it." 

"Why?" 

"You tell me." 

He thought about it, watching the waves come in, gently collapse against the shore and wash back out again, and he knew he had no idea at all. "I don't know. I just fight - it's what I do." 

"You do more than that." 

"Hardly. But what about you? Why do you bother? You could have the world, and you fight for the damn thing, but otherwise you don't fuck around with it. What's up with that?" 

Bob smirked down at the sand, running his fingers through it and creating a pattern that almost looked like the runic characters that had once been painted on his skin. "At the end of the day, Logan, I just want to live my life. As grotesquely long as it is." He looked up, and gave him a small, sad smile. "And I know you understand that." 

Logan looked away with an annoyed grunt, not really wanting to admit that. 

"You take care of yourself, Logan," Bob continued. "You did good. And if I come back and find out you got yourself torn to pieces again, I'll be pretty pissed off." 

"Not as much as me." He glanced out at the rolling waves once more, and told him, "Come back soon. I think you're needed." 

"I know. That's always the bitch of it, isn't it?" 

Logan realized he was probably including him in that as well, but when he turned to say something, he suddenly woke up on the sofa in Bob's front room. He found Helga standing in the kitchen archway, looking at him as if he'd grown a second head. He stared back at her, and said, "Bob just got in touch with me." 

"Yeah - he was speaking through you." 

Now he gave her the funny look. "What does that mean?" 

"Means what it means. He was speaking through you." She sagged against the jamb, but it seemed to be more a result of exhaustion than relief. "At least he's still alive somewhere." 

"Yeah. " He was speaking through him, to Helga, while speaking to him in his own head? That was creepy. He must have been in better shape than he thought. 

Helga turned away, back towards the kitchen, a hand over her mouth, and he knew she was more upset than she was letting on. He didn't think he could blame her either. 

Epilogue 

    The first day at the cabin in Lac des Cygnes, Logan slept for twenty four hours. It was all the dimension hopping and god shit - it really took a toll, even on him. 

When he did get up again, he realized Bob had been to the cabin and made some revisions since he was last here. There were new books, new bottles of booze in the bar, and new crap in the root cellar. Along with a spare generator and a small washer and dryer, he'd added even more weird foods to the stores - who needed two pounds of yogurt covered pretzels and a box of "just add water" tahini mix? Well, at least if he ever got a sudden craving for prickly pear cactus candy, he had some. 

The last time he'd been here, in this lone cabin smack dab in the middle of nowhere in the Laurentian mountain range, he'd cut enough wood to apparently last until now - it was still a knee high, neatly stacked pile in the far corner of the cellar, next to a keg of wood screws ( he knew better than to ever ask ). But still he grabbed the axe after helping himself to a morning beer ( some Quebec brand he'd never heard of before, but remarkably good - Bob had good taste ... well, when he wanted to ), and went out to cut some more. It wasn't that he really thought he'd need it, even though it was still so cold up here the snow was calf deep and hardened to a crust on the surface - it was just strenuous physical activity, and that helped  take his mind off of things. 

He hadn't gone back to the mansion because he just didn't feel ready to face them yet. What if they asked where he'd been? What was he going to say? "A couple of weird ass dimensions. Helped save the world from a crazed goddess out to eat it, and discovered, when broken, adamantium bones hurt like all fuck. Also found out most gods - except Bob - are pretty humorless, and hell has the strangest magazines in its waiting room." Yes, that wouldn't get him funny looks at all. Even he couldn't quite believe it when he heard it in his own mind. 

He just wasn't up to dealing with people right now - Human or otherwise. He just needed some down time to think and be by himself, away from all this shit. And he couldn't be more away than up here - well, unless he went back to Ogdoad, but he didn't want to, and besides, he knew damn well Amaunet didn't like him. Which was okay, because that was mutual. 

He read the books and tromped through the snowy woods, looking for gods knew what, and enjoying the silence and lack of human smells. He was starting to remember how much he hated to be alone with his thoughts when, on his fourth day, he heard a Sno-Cat in the distance, headed up here. He was braced and ready for trouble ( although how anyone could have found him up here he had no idea ), but it turned out to be Helga. He hadn't told her he'd be up here, and she'd had the same idea he had had about getting away from it all. He offered to go, but she insisted he stay, as she didn't intend to be here for more than a couple of days - she really didn't like the "Arctic wilderness" so much, it was just staying at Bob's Sydney place without him there was driving her crazy. It was too big, and too empty. 

In a way, it was hardly like he had company at all - he was out in the woods and the snow, and she stayed back at the cabin ( she was not a "cold weather demon", whatever that meant ), trying to see if she could get any reception on the portable t.v. or radio in the cellar. ( His guess on that was no, although she probably had better luck with the radio. ) 

There was the problem of the one bed, but he didn't care - he rarely used it, as he seemed to have a penchant for falling asleep on the couch while reading. But she woke him up later with a kiss, and even though he knew she didn't actually want him - she wanted Bob - the single bed issue became irrelevant. Well hell - who was he to kick a woman out of bed? Or, more appropriately, off the couch. 

They fell into a loose pattern of behavior after that - pretty much staying by themselves during the day  and ending up together at night. It was probably very wrong, but it hadn't stopped them before, so why stop now? 

One morning he got up before she did - he'd had a surprising lack of nightmares so far, but that didn't necessarily mean he slept in ( especially since he did sleep an entire day ) - and made breakfast for them, since he was tired of eating the packaged stuff, and the fresh food he'd bought at the last chance general store down the mountain was going to start going bad if he didn't do something with it. She was surprised that,(A) he could cook and (B) it was edible, and he pointed out that he'd cooked for himself before - he didn't completely live on fast and bar food, just mostly. That led her to ask what he had done after he'd woken up naked and with no memory fifteen years ago - a good question that no one had asked him before. Maybe that's why he told her, or maybe he had actually wanted to tell someone; he really wasn't sure. 

Not that there was a lot to tell. He was pretty sure he was insane for the first six months or so ( he thought it was that much, but it might have been as little as three months - back then, he had no real sense of time yet ); his mind was Swiss cheese, with more holes than substance, and he was driven much of the time by pure instinct, much of which centered around fear. He was afraid of people, so what he ended up doing was breaking into some chalets near a resort in what must have been the Canadian Rockies - they were mostly vacation and "ski" homes of the wealthy, so no one was there, and they hadn't been lived in for months. Still the homes were furnished, and they'd left clothes behind, some food in the pantry, and he managed to survive basically as a "squatter", taking what he needed, sleeping inside when it was just too cold outside. He started to read the books they had ( not many, in most cases - once he found what looked like a library, but what turned out to be three-D wallpaper that just looked like shelves and books ), and sanity began to slowly reassert itself, or maybe his mind just started healing itself. He finally got tired of being afraid - tired and fucking pissed off - and he knew there had to be answers to what he was, and what he was so afraid of, out there somewhere. 

What he didn't tell her was that he was so overwhelmed by people at first - the sound of them, the smell of them - that he had to retreat and wait for his built in filtering to kick in before he could venture among them again. He knew how to filter these things out subconsciously, but he had lived beyond people for so long, and his mind was so fucked over, it took a while for his body to remember how to do it. Bob had been right there - the downside to "super" senses was that everyone frankly stunk, and made too much goddamn noise. If he didn't want to live his life in a sensory depravation tank - and he didn't, although it sounded nice sometimes - it was just something he learned to live with. It was amazing what he had learned to put up with now, but back then it nearly knocked him flat. 

She did ask him another question no one had ever asked."I know you were what - on the bare knuckle boxing and ultimate fighting underground circuit, right? Your ring savvy on Dis kind of proved that. So you never merc-ed?" 

He looked at her askance as she grabbed the pan and emptied the last of the eggs onto her plate. She certainly wasn't one of those women shy about eating, she just tucked in. Kind of like the rest of her personality - coy and demure was for pussies. "Why do you ask that?" 

"I ain't exactly as pure as driven snow - I know the underground scene. Okay, in the States, not necessarily Canada, but I know guys of questionable character would hang around those underground type dealies and hire out mercs from there. They figured the guys were tougher than Clint Eastwood's ball sack, desperate for money, and crazier than a shithouse rat. You were never approached?" 

He didn't know how far he was willing to go. He felt comfortable opening up to Helga because - as long as you were straight with her - she'd never use information against you. She liked a fair fight, and would only fight dirty if you went there first. But there was a lot of his recent past he was more than willing to forget. "I was approached, yeah. But the fuckers oozed sleaze like hair oil." 

"Not interested?" 

"No." She studied him with an uncomfortable scrutiny, fork paused half way to her lips. Maybe she couldn't spot liars quite as well as he could, but she'd been with Bob, and was a professional assassin - she knew a pose when she saw one. "Okay, the money was sometimes temptin' 'cause I had none, but at the end of the day I couldn't justify workin' with guys who I knew would stab me in the back first chance they got." Maybe someday he'd tell her the whole truth, but right now he wasn't up to it. 

Either she believed him, or understood his reluctance to talk about it, as she dropped it after that. 

Helga stayed on for two more days, then decided she was getting "cabin fever" and had to leave before she went nuts. Besides, she was hopeful that Bob would be back very soon. She was obviously hoping he was back now, but he'd have certainly contacted them if that were true - he wouldn't leave them hanging like this, no matter how much of an asshole he could be at times. 

As he saw her off, she gave him a passionate kiss and a big hug, and whispered in his ear, "You know, it could have been you." 

It took him a moment to figure out that she meant if she didn't love Bob, she could have love him. He took that as the high compliment that it was. 

He'd gotten used to having her around, as much as a pain as company was; he only realized that later that night, tossing kindling into the fire and finishing off a bottle of rum. It was better to be alone though, but still he did kind of miss her. Okay, yes, he mostly missed the sex, but he did miss her as well - she was a hell of a woman. She proved Bob had taste if nothing else, in women but mostly just in people - did that mean there was hope for him? 

Nah. 

He watched the red orange flames make patterns in the hearth, and remembered the flaming desert, and Kumiho and her hair and eyes of fire. It was funny - if he unfocused his eyes and tilted his head at just the right angle, he could almost see her face, captured inside the flames. What was it about only the criminally insane wanting to rule something?  He couldn't say the world since Kumiho wanted the Higher Realms; she just wanted to eat the world for fuel or something like that. Too weird. Eat the world? Shit - his life was really out of control if that only struck him as passingly weird, and hardly worth noticing. 

As Logan sat there, being soothed by the crackle of the flames and the sharp scent of fresh pine, he thought about what Bob had said about just wanting to live his life. That was what he wanted too, wasn't it? He just wished the world - and his past - would let him. Nothing was ever that simple, was it? 

He knew he had to get moving soon - Helga wasn't the only one in danger of catching cabin fever. But where would he go? He still wasn't ready to face the others just yet. He could try and give his forgotten past another gander, but hell, was there anything there that was worth remembering? So far he had been remarkably disillusioned by the bits and pieces he had found ... but since when was he coward? And there had to be something else out there, some clue, that would lead him to the Organization once and for all. If he couldn't shut them down, who could? 

Logan sat back and enjoyed the silence, figuring he'd worry about tomorrow when it got here. 

**** 

The End 


End file.
